


Like Stones at Glass Houses

by Signel_chan



Series: S&BS-verse [2]
Category: Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates, Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: A Vicious Cycle of Lies and Cheating, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Babies, Celebrations, Drunken Shenanigans, Family, Multi, Old Flames, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-21
Updated: 2017-06-13
Packaged: 2018-09-18 23:15:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 106,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9407195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Signel_chan/pseuds/Signel_chan
Summary: No one's completely immune to bad decisions, but calling someone out for one is grounds for karma retaliating in unexpected ways. It only takes a few negative opinions on the choices of the people around her for Severa to learn this lesson first hand, but by then it's far too late for her or Brady to stop what's coming for her.





	1. Twice as Nice

**Author's Note:**

> Make sure to have at least read the last chapter of Stupid and Barely Special before reading this, it makes everything make so much more sense c:

Walking into work with the mindset of being there solely to make a little bit of money before leaving for the day, Severa was stopped before she even made it back to the kitchen by someone holding out a shift roster at her. “Uh, yeah, normally I get to clock in before I get told where I’m serving,” she said, not even caring that she was sassing one of her managers. “Can I at least do that first?”

“Ooh, assignments!” Coming in right behind her friend with an upbeat attitude and the desire to make as much money as possible, Cynthia snatched that paper roster out of the manager’s hand and looked it over, giggling as she handed it back. “Looks like we’ve got the party room to ourselves today, bestie!” she announced, draping herself over Severa’s back and shoulders. “You know what that means!”

“It means that, once again, you’re breaking your rule of not taking parties,” Severa replied with a sigh, knocking her friend off her back and making sure that her long braid wasn’t mussed too much by the contact before going back to rifling through her purse for her clock-in card. “Color me shocked on that one. It seems any time they need their best server to take a party, they have to assign someone who hates running parties to work with her.”

As the manager walked off to share the great news about where people would be serving to other employees, the two ladies found themselves fighting over who could clock in first (after Severa found her card, naturally), before walking towards the designated party room, a sign on the door stating that the space was reserved for the morning. “Huh, I can’t believe someone’s actually reserved this, and we’ve been the ones chosen to work in here! How funny is that?” Cynthia asked, laughing even as she watched Severa rolling her eyes at the behavior. “Oh come on, you’ve got to think this is all funny.”

“Not really, no.” Cracking the door to the room open, Severa looked at how the tables were arranged, one off to the side of the room while the others were all aligned together. Raising her eyebrows at what she saw, she called out to Cynthia, “Hey, does that sign say what this is reserved for, exactly. Looks like a birthday party or a business meeting.”

“It doesn’t say anything, but if it looks like that, chances are it’s one of those or something like it.” Cynthia pulled the door open more than Severa had, walking inside and spinning around in the empty middle of the room. “With it being arranged like this, I can so see people playing games or something in here to celebrate something! Or, maybe, to have a huge assortment of presents! I vote it’s an actual party of some kind!”

Severa sighed, leaning against the door and fiddling with the end of her braid while Cynthia stopped her childish behavior. “Listen, last night wasn’t exactly a great night, and as much as I love working with you and spending time with you, I’d so rather be at home trying to sleep. I came in to make a few bucks, not to be stuck here all day with some party that’s not even going to tip worth a damn.”

Abruptly stopping mid-spin, Cynthia jumped to be facing her friend, tilting her head to one side in confusion. “Okay, you’re _not_ playing stupid about not knowing what this party is, are you? You really have no clue that this is…huh, interesting!” She clasped her hands together, leaving the room and heading towards the kitchen, Severa picking herself up off the door to follow. “We’ll have a whole bunch of fun today, especially after you remember what this is all about.”

“It’s mid-August…” Severa brought a hand to her chin and stroked it in thought, before shaking her head. “Pretty sure we all went out for your fiancé’s birthday day-of, but maybe this is for him? Is that why you’re being cage-y with me? We’re throwing that asshole another party where he’s going to skimp on tipping the person who serves him—that, you know, being us this time—and that’s why you don’t want to say it to me.”

Cynthia snorted at the accusation. “No, trust me, it’s not for Inigo, even though he’s totally going to be here today.” She paused, looking behind her to see Severa eyeing her warily, just to turn back facing forward and scurry into the kitchen. “I mean, he’s going to be here because he comes in all the time when I’m working! You know how it is!”

“Trust me, I know exactly how it is, and I know when you’re lying to me through your teeth.” Severa made the motions to follow her friend to assist with setting up, but she was stopped by something grabbing onto her hair and holding it back, so that when she stepped forward she was yanked backwards. “What the…” she started, trying to grab her braid and pull it from its current prison, to no avail. She turned to give something a good yell and ended up gasping in surprise at who was standing behind her, a permanently calloused and stained hand letting go of her braid as she turned. “Brady! What are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be working right now?”

“No way, shop’s closed today for the party. Thought you’d have figured that when I wasn’t up when you were gettin' ready to come in.” Smiling at his wife as she went from being upset over having to take care of a group to being overjoyed at seeing her husband, he opened his arms wide for her to jump into him for a hug, sending him stumbling back a couple steps from the force she jumped at him with. “Whoa now, don’t be so eager to hug me. Think about who’s underfoot, why don’t ya?”

After covering his neck and jaw with kisses, she looked down and saw a very familiar blue pigtailed head hiding behind his legs, someone she reached down to with one hand while clinging to him with the other. “I didn’t know you’d be bringing Luna with you,” she said, sounding slightly apologetic. “Last thing I’d want is for you to trample the poor girl.”

“Hi Mama,” the small voice attached to that head rang out, a little hand reaching for Severa’s and grabbing it tightly. She pulled herself into her mother’s arm, laughing as she did, and ultimately ended up looking up at her mother while she beamed down at her. “Love you Mama! Mwah!”

“She’s been super excited to come see ya here today,” Brady explained, watching as Severa unlatched herself from him so that she could bend down to pick the girl up, both mother and daughter laughing as they quickly snuggled. “I’ve been tellin’ her all week about how we’d get to come see ya and she just loved hearin’ about it.”

“Yeah, it’s not every day that she gets brought in here to see me working, but…” After planting a loud kiss on her daughter’s cheek, the girl giggling and making more _mwah_ noises with her mouth, Severa looked to Brady expecting some kind of explanation. “Mind telling me what this ‘party’ is about? I don’t remember hearing a word of this before today.”

Brady’s eyes narrowed as he tried judging just how honest Severa was being with her question, but when she gave a little head motion, beckoning for him to answer her, he knew she was completely serious. “Huh, thought you’d been in on the plannin’ of this, based on what Inigo kept sayin’ to me about it. He said Cynthia was mighty hands-on with plottin’ the details here.”

If there had been more to what he was saying (which there must have been, he hadn’t actually explained anything), a loud call for someone to open the door to the party room distracted him. He turned to see who it was calling out, Severa stepping around him to see for herself, and they were both greeted with the sight of a quickly-moving woman holding a giant cake in her arms. “Someone please open the door, I’m going to drop this if you make me try and do it!”

“Whoa now, didn’t we say to wait until someone else got here before bringin’ the cake in, Aunt Lissa?” Brady asked, before shaking his head at his aunt’s impatience and going to open the door for her. Severa, after looking back to see that Cynthia had already grabbed a stack of plates and was on her way back over to the room herself, shrugged and carried her daughter over to where her husband was trying to figure out how to keep the door open. She passed the girl over to him and latched the door open himself, causing him to laugh. “Thanks for that, Sev. But, uh, any of this making sense to ya yet?”

“I wish it was,” Severa admitted, peeking into the room at how the blonde woman they’d just let in was setting the cake down on the table that was separate from all the others, making sure it was set up perfectly before she bustled back out of the room. “My guess was that this was some birthday party for a certain friend of yours, but if your aunt’s here, I don’t see how that makes any sense.”

He laughed at her lack of having caught on, the girl in his arms mimicking him. “Not really sleepin’ last night must have really messed with your mind. Do ya think ya could watch Luna for me while I run out and help with bringin’ presents in? I’m sure she’d love gettin' to spend time with you and Cynthia for a moment.” He offered the girl back over to Severa right as the other woman mentioned caught up with them, arms filled with plates that she set on the edge of the same table as the cake.

“Say, why’s Lunabel here already?” Cynthia asked when she could finally move her arms again, looking at the little girl that was once again being held by Severa. “I would’ve figured that she’d be being watched by, say, one of her grandparents until it’s party time, not brought over here right at the start of prep.” That didn’t stop her from approaching the little girl and waving at her, Lunabel laughing and waving right back. “Gods she’s adorable, I can’t wait until I have one of my own someday and join the mom club.”

“If you want her, I’m sure we can loan her to you for a week or two. It’ll get to be a lot but— _oh gods damn it_.” The realization of what the party was for hit Severa unexpectedly and a lot like a sack of bricks, making her glance from the mostly-empty room towards the front entrance of the restaurant, where she could see the next wave of things being brought in coming towards them. “The baby shower’s today, isn’t it?”

Stifling a laugh, Cynthia nodded, before motioning for Severa to follow her while she went back into the kitchen for more supplies. “It sure is! Yeah, it sucks that we don’t get to really be part of it, but we’re at least serving it and we’ll make it a fun day for everyone involved.” She stopped halfway to the kitchen, spinning on her toes to face Severa and Lunabel, opening her arms to be handed the girl. “But since I carried the plates in, you can bring the next load of stuff and I’ll carry the baby.”

“Not a ba-a-aby,” Lunabel corrected, sounding oddly smug for being a young kid, before puffing out her cheeks and asserting, “Luna a big girl!”

“Okay, okay, I’ll hold the big girl. Just don’t make me carry all those water cups into the room, I’ll probably spill them.” Without waiting for Severa to really process the offer that had been made, Cynthia reached in and grabbed Lunabel for herself, pulling her close to her with the girl shrieking the entire time, and then set off back towards the kitchen. “Seriously, I can’t wait until I’ve got a kid of my own, but Luna’s such a well-behaved girl that I doubt I’d get even half as lucky as you did.”

“She’s only good when she wants to be, which is basically any time other people aside from me or Brady will be seeing her.” Severa was following right behind Cynthia, keeping eye contact with Lunabel as she looked over the shoulder of the woman holding her. “Last night she refused to get into her bed until past midnight, then as soon as we went to bed she let herself into the room and climbed in with us. Little brat, keeping us up all night with her rolling and her kicking.” She scrunched her face at her daughter, who returned the expression with no hesitation.

“That’s just what kids do, though. I could handle it, probably.” Shrugging and jostling Lunabel enough into getting her to look forward at the kitchen of the restaurant, Cynthia stopped walking in front of a large bin of rolls of silverware and pointed a shoulder at it. “Now grab a whole bunch so we don’t run out. No one’s really sure how many people are going to show up to this thing, so we need to be prepared.”

Not used to taking orders like that, Severa laughed, bowing her head at her friend before reaching into the bin to grab all her arms could hold. “Right on it, ma’am. Want me to do the rest of your work for you while I’m at it?”

“Hey now, I’m holding your kid, I could drop her to help you if you really want me to.” At the mere mention of being dropped, Lunabel started whining in protest, which only made Cynthia grin down at Severa as she was struggling to get all that silverware positioned so that it wouldn’t fall when she moved. “Not like I’d ever actually drop Luna, she’s too cute and precious to be dropped.”

“I’d say, and if I found out anyone had dropped my baby, I’d probably kill them.” Standing back up with her arms mostly supporting what held them, Severa caught her daughter’s eye right as she was about to say something, and she froze before sighing. “Sorry, if anyone dropped my _big girl_ , I’d probably kill them. You’re not a baby, Luna. I know that.”

Instead of getting to sound smug, Lunabel merely put a sly smile on her face, squinting her eyes to let her mother know that she enjoyed the grown-up treatment she was getting. “This kid is definitely yours, she knows how to get people to say exactly what she wants.” Cynthia bounced the girl again, making her break her smirk to laugh. “I think she’s going to grow up being just like you, which is totally awesome!”

“Eh, I would rather she not grow up to be like me, but we’ll see how that’s going in a few years.” Now it was Severa leading the way back to the other room, not wanting to drop anything because she was too busy standing around talking. The one issue with being the leader was that she couldn’t keep an eye on what Cynthia was doing to her child, but based on how all she heard was giggles and the occasional short phrase come from Lunabel’s mouth, she figured she didn’t have anything to worry about.

Coming into the party room again, the entire atmosphere had changed from the last time they’d been in there a couple moments before. Once again there wasn’t anyone in there aside from them, but the room had filled up slightly with the appearance of balloons and a stack of presents, and after she’d set the silverware down on the long table and placed one set at every chair, Severa was looking at what all was visible of the gifts, Cynthia standing next to her doing the same thing. “I really hope this isn’t all that people have brought,” Cynthia said, her eyes tracking across several gifts. “I know that I handed my money off directly to Owain’s mom this time, since I couldn’t exactly give it to him, so I’ve got at least one good present in here somewhere, but still, this doesn’t seem like nearly as much as last time we threw one of these…”

Hearing that made Severa draw in her breath, her stomach sinking a bit as she glanced over at Lunabel for a moment, the girl going on about how she liked the colors of the presents in front of her. “Y-yeah, you know what, you’re right on that,” she agreed, going back to looking at the presents, “but keep in mind that last time was _also_ my birthday party so there was a lot of extra stuff.”

“I guess, but I really hope Noire doesn’t, like, flip out that her baby isn’t getting as spoiled as yours did.” Cynthia bit her lip, looking to the door to see people coming in, arms laden with some more gifts, but ultimately a bunch of decorations—the most prominent being a few bouquets of flowers. One newcomer in particular made her eyes light up, and no sooner than she had been able to set Lunabel down on the floor did she rush over to the man’s side, burying herself in his shoulder. “You managed to convince your mother to let you bring flowers after all! I’m so proud of you, Inigo!”

“All it took was a few reminders of what these flowers would be for and she was quickly jumping on board with the idea,” he replied, trying to brush her off so he could set his armload of flowers down. “I couldn’t for my life get a good answer as to what kind of flower would be best for the day, so Mother and I selected a decent variety. Let’s hope the expectant woman of the hour doesn’t lash out regarding our choice.”

“I don’t think she’ll be able to,” Cynthia assured him, taking his hint and backing up a half-step so she could look at the flowers while he tried to decide where to set them. “They’re all so pretty, kind of like she is. Pretty and radiant, and all sorts of different colors too! I bet she’ll be super happy they’re not all pink like, uh,” she looked back at the presents, every single one of which was wrapped with some kind of pink paper, “everything else is.”

While they were discussing the flowers, Brady and his arms filled with more presents walked over to add what he had to the stack, before picking Lunabel back up off the ground to keep her from ripping anything open. “None of those are for ya, sorry little miss,” he apologized, kissing the top of her head between her pigtails as she tried to squirm away from him. “Ya don’t get presents every time someone does, just sometimes.”

“I really hope you don’t intend on turning and showing her the cake that’s in here,” Severa commented, looking from the presents again to let her eyes settle on said cake, which was an impossible task as there were several people standing around it. “Uh, what are they doing? Noire’s not even here and they’re already digging in?”

Brady shook his head, turning as well despite what his wife had just said to him. “No, more like, they couldn’t exactly ask the baker for a frosted message on it so Aunt Lissa decided she’d do it herself, even though she doesn’t have a clue how to frost a cake. Only had to listen to her askin’ every single one of us in the car if we knew how to do it on the way over here. Can’t believe she managed to ask Noire to make the cake herself without tellin’ her what it was for.”

“Noire enjoys baking things for people, I’m sure she was happy to jump at the opportunity to bake something for someone that wasn’t herself.” Leaning from one side to the other to try and see past the wall of people surrounding the cake, Severa ended up giving up and sighing, resting herself against Brady’s arm. “When do you think everyone else is going to get here? It’s not going to just be you and Luna, Noire, Owain, his parents, the couple of their friends over there, and Inigo, is it?”

“If it was, we’d not be having this right now because that would be the rudest thing for them. Lucina and Laurent…gods know they’ll show up late, if at all. Pretty sure Ma mentioned comin’ in at some point, which makes sense because of how close her and Aunt Lissa are, and who knows, maybe others’ll come too?” Brady did a quick headcount of everyone who was there, before shrugging. “I didn’t actually know that Cynthia’s folks were gonna be here, that’s pretty nice of them. Adds to the people who did show.”

“Yeah, well, I’m beginning to regret even coming into work today if this is the group I’m serving. How am I supposed to make any money off of you guys, especially if your sister and mother only _might_ show up?” Severa was beginning to scowl as she started looking around again, the small number of people in the room really starting to irritate her.

That irritation only grew worse when another blonde woman came into the room, bags hanging from her arms. “My, my, this place looks awfully drab for being where a baby shower is happening in literal minutes. Haven’t you all learned a thing or two about decorating for these things?” She was greeted with a wave of hellos, the weakest and most unimpressed coming from Severa, who was simultaneously thankful to see someone made of money walk in the room but disgusted that her mother-in-law was actually there. “Yes, I managed to sneak out of work for a little while to be present for the party, now why have none of you started decorating?”

While a weak case for why no one had begun putting up banners was explained to Maribelle, Severa stepped away, grabbing Cynthia by the arm and dragging her from where she was talking to Inigo to take her back towards the kitchen. “Hold on, I was totally in the middle of conversation there!” she protested, trying to drag her heels but not succeeding. “Severa, just because someone you don’t like came in doesn’t mean we have to actually work!”

“I know her far too well to know that she’d start complaining in seconds about waters not being brought to the party already, we should really get on that.” In actuality, Severa was just trying to distance herself from Maribelle before anything could be said between them, knowing that one wrong word would start an argument she had no real interest in being part of. “Do you even know when Noire and Owain are supposed to get here?”

“Whenever he can get her to leave their place, I guess,” Cynthia answered with a shrug, grabbing a tray and a stand for it for Severa to place filled glasses of water on once she had them. “They’ll get here, though, I so believe in Owain’s ability to convince her out on a lunch date or whatever lie it is he was planning on using to get her over here.”

“Let’s just hope that when they do get here, she doesn’t explode on him with that scary side of herself for being lied to.” Shuddering at the thought of that altercation happening, Severa started quickly filling the glasses and setting them on Cynthia’s tray, and once she was done together they lifted it and carried it back to the room. It was a lot different-looking on the inside than it had been when they left, Maribelle’s appearance causing everyone to shift into decorating mode, and it was starting to feel more like a baby shower should, even if it was a lot of family present and there weren’t a whole lot of gifts.

There was also the added addition of the other people that Brady hadn’t been sure of attending or not, plus one that he hadn’t mentioned. It was that one when, seeing Severa, waved for her to approach him, and she obliged after getting that tray of waters sat down where Cynthia could dole them out, feeling no reason to deny her father-in-law that opportunity. “Apologies in advance if, due to me being here today, the restaurant as a whole ends up a bit more…crowded, if you will,” Chrom said, before patting Severa on the shoulder. “Guess the rumor mill’s been churning out some lovely stories about me, and you know how people love hearing stories about politicians.”

“Don’t worry, this party’s all I’ll be taking today, if it even ends up being a party.” To say she was still a bit underwhelmed with the turnout was an understatement, as she looked around the room again and watched as Brady was trying his best to hang something up near the ceiling, Maribelle barking orders at him with Lunabel in her arms. “Ugh, who let her hold my baby…?”

“That would have been my suggestion.” His voice flat, Chrom stopped patting her shoulder and instead pushed her a bit towards where she was looking. “As soon as you left she started calling for Maribelle and, well, you know how hard it is to resist that kid.”

“Mama!” Lunabel shrieked, turning and seeing her mother stubbornly being pushed towards her. “Mama, look! Mamaw-belle!”

Before Severa could hush her child to stop the noise, Maribelle’s attention was already drawn to the reason for the shrieking, her eyes going narrow but her smile trying to look at least somewhat pleasing when she saw Severa. “Ah yes, it seems that is indeed your mother, sweet child. Do you want to be back with her, or do you want to keep staying with your dear Mamaw-belle that you love so much?”

Lunabel contorted her face as she thought, before knocking her head back and announcing, “Mamaw-belle! Not silly Mama, nope!”

“That’s my granddaughter, you know exactly who to be with.” Kissing the girl gently, Maribelle’s eyes were still narrowed towards Severa, who was actively rolling hers. “Oh, you know she only gets like this because spending time with me is a luxury she doesn’t always get. She spends more time with various other family members before she does with me.”

“You know, maybe there’s a reason for that,” Severa grumbled, before a loud _shhhh_ filled the room, someone at the door spotting the most important guests of the day and wanting everyone to get into position. All decorating stopped on a dime, people diving for their seats at the table and leaving the two servers for the party stuck standing because they technically weren’t allowed to be seated at that moment. Rather than stand in the middle of the room and draw attention to themselves, Cynthia chose to act like she was taking an order while Severa just stood against the wall, making herself invisible to a first scan of the room.

“Come on, oh please, we’re almost there,” they could all hear Owain saying in encouragement, and while they couldn’t make out whatever Noire’s soft response was, based on how he had to tell her that he didn’t need to ask the person at the front for a table because he already had one held for them, it was probably something to do with the oddness of their arrival at the restaurant. She must have said something else too, because they could all hear him sigh and say, “Yeah, I know it’s a long walk and you’d rather not have done it, but I figured a nice, quiet room would be better to sit than, you know, in any of the loud spots inside.”

“I thank you for that, but…” Everyone who was sitting at the table was turning to watch what was unfolding, all able to see Owain shielding the entrance to the room with his body as they finished their conversation, Noire not sounding thrilled to be there at all. “Wouldn’t it have been better to just not go out? I’m pretty sure everyone was just staring at us as we walked past them.”

“Heh, nonsense! No one was staring at you, if they were doing any staring it would’ve been at me!” Laughing, Owain took a step backward, actually entering the room now, and the excitement that was building inside was making it hard to keep quiet and not say something to the couple in the doorway. “Now let’s get to our table, I’d hate to keep you on your feet a second longer than necessary!”

He stepped aside, revealing the room to his wife, and her facial expression as she realized that it wasn’t just a lunch date but rather an entire party for her was one that several people took pictures of for memory’s sake. “Y-you all did this for me?” she asked, pointing to herself before letting her hand fall to the top of her stomach. “O-oh, that’s really nice, it is. But how _dare_ you lie to me about what we were doing out today!” She reached towards Owain with her other hand and tried to grab him, but he stepped further away with a sheepish grin. “If I’d known we’d be spending the day with family, I’d have dressed more appropriately!”

“There’s nothing wrong with how you did dress,” he assured her, still not stepping back to within her vengeful grasp. “Given the, uh, circumstances, you look great!” The general opinion among the group was that she looked fine, but Severa, standing against the wall and therefore unable to really voice her opinion with the rest of them, thought different. As she watched Noire fully come into the room, she couldn’t help but feel a little judgmental about her; having been pregnant before, she was pretty confident in judging that something seemed to be a bit off about how large Noire was at the moment, almost as if she was days away from giving birth, not almost two months.

That wasn’t anything she was going to tell anyone, though, especially not when the person it was about had such a low tolerance for any negativity before she completely snapped. The closest she got to even approaching that subject was a few minutes later, when her and Cynthia were out of the room ringing up the first round of orders for the party. “Is it me, or does that shirt Noire’s wearing make her look a lot bigger than the last time we saw her?” Cynthia asked, making rounded gestures with her arms. “I can tell it’s really clinging to her, which makes me think that—”

“As much as I’d love to talk about that with you,” Severa interjected, “I kind of have a personal policy of not discussing that kind of stuff behind someone’s back. I know I would’ve shanked someone if I found out they’d been talking about me like that when I was pregnant, so I wouldn’t put that past Noire.”

“But you were mostly just cake fat, remember?” If there was one bad thing about having these conversations with Cynthia, it was that she didn’t always have a filter that kept the absurd and somewhat rude comments from coming out. Rather than reply and get dragged into the conversation she wasn’t going to have with anyone, Severa mimed shutting lips with her hand and Cynthia sighed, catching on that her topic wasn’t going to fly. “Okay, I’ll drop it, but I’m going to get to the bottom of this.”

Severa really did not want Cynthia pressuring Noire for answers, so she thought for just a second for a reasonable explanation for what was being asked about. “You know, she might have gotten a taste of her own medicine and some karmic payback for what she tried doing to me,” she suggested with a shrug. “Not like I think she deserves it, but if she let herself get attached to eating her own baked goods then that would explain this, don’t you think?”

“I…guess it would! Thanks, Severa! Here I was getting worried that her baby was super huge or something.” Laughing, Cynthia gave Severa a quick hug before getting started on ringing up her half of the order. “Even though she’s really big, I still think Noire’s super pretty. I hope that when I get to have a baby someday, I can manage to stay as pretty as she has.”

“You’re doing an awful lot of talking about having kids, are you trying to tell me something?” Raising an eyebrow at Cynthia, Severa saw how her friend started rapidly shaking her head and breaking into the good-girl explanation of how she was waiting until after she was married to even seriously consider it. “Okay, well, you haven’t really stopped talking about babies today and you worried me a bit with it.”

“I’m sorry, it must be something to do with what today is and what we’re doing and all that,” Cynthia said, still prepared to give more of her explanation if Severa didn’t completely accept what she’d already said. “Trust me, having a kid before I get married is not in the cards. There isn’t even enough time, anyway.”

“Nothing saying you’re not going to get right on it as soon as you’re married, though.” Smirking, Severa watched Cynthia shrink back a bit as she heard those words, more of that defense for her decision on her lips while she was putting in the order. “I’m just telling you, at this rate, I’m not going to be even a tiny bit surprised when you tell me you ‘may or may not’ have gotten knocked up on your wedding night.”

“H-hey now, I’ve got better self-control than that!” Waving her hands in front of her face to try and calm herself from getting worked up over the suggestion, Cynthia playfully glared at Severa through the corners of her eye. “And since when did this become about me! We’re not working for me right now, we’re doing this for Noire, remember? She’s the one actually _having_ a baby anytime soon!”

“Yeesh, as if I could manage to forget that.” Severa looked towards the room where she was sure some kind of fun was happening without them being there. “Trust me, I don’t think I could ever forget that she’s anywhere close to popping. Was one of the first people to know, have been there for almost every stupid question she’s had to ask—“

“You also completely forgot that today was her baby shower.” Finishing up the order with a dramatic press of the “send to kitchen” button, Cynthia grinned at Severa, only for her to be walked past without another word. “I’m just saying, it’s the truth!”

Rejoining everyone in the room for a few moments before any appetizers that were ordered would need to be brought out, Severa (and Cynthia, once she followed her friend in) stood against the wall closest to the door, watching everyone’s fun from a distance. There were still empty seats at the table, but Severa was pretty sure they weren’t ever going to be filled, meaning that the small group that had gathered was going to be it. They were decently loud and filled with questions that were getting shouted out at random; from where she was standing she could tell that Noire was already quite overwhelmed at the attention that everyone was giving her, and trying to answer questions was not going so well.

It was kind of like a train wreck, it was only getting worse but it was so hard to look away, but there came a point where it was clear that she was just about to start lashing out at everyone like she was capable of. Severa looked to Cynthia, who was side-stepping towards the door to leave the room before any yelling started, before looking back at everyone who was sitting around just yelling their curious questions at Noire. She wanted to say something to get them all to stop, but at the same time, the morbid curiosity of how that verbal lashing would happen was keeping her from saying anything. There must have been some worried expression on her face as she was looking around, though, because she heard someone at the table clear their throat to try and silence everyone, which when that was ignored she saw Lissa jump to her feet and start using her words to get the room to go quiet.

That was as good a time as any to leave and grab the starting round of the meal, Severa decided, and so she headed out once more with Cynthia already outside the room waiting for her. “I don’t hear yelling, so I’m assuming someone stepped in before Noire had enough,” she said, Severa nodding at the correct guess. “That’s good. Poor girl doesn’t need that kind of stress in her life. I bet that’s not good for the baby.”

“Look, it’s you talking about babies again, what a surprise.” Her deadpan voice was enough to make Cynthia laugh, despite having been called out on her topic of conversation, and the two ladies made it a point to get what they needed as fast as possible to return to the party without missing too much.

Of course, with the nature of the group they were dealing with, it was hard to guess how much they’d miss over the course of a couple minutes while they were waiting for the kitchen to get its act together and properly make the necessary food. When they came back in, each of them with a tray carrying either food or a few drinks that had been rang in with the order, it was once again a different scene than when they’d left it. Wrapping paper was scattered across the floor, a small stack of opened baby gifts already piling up, and Noire seemed to be trying her best to look enthusiastic about what she was receiving. It was hard to watch her opening anything when there were plates to deliver, but both of the servers were able to at least hear what was being said with the opening of every gift while they were in there.

“Oh good, exactly what we needed. More clothes.” Whoever’s gift she’d just opened, based on how flat her voice was it was clear Noire was not thrilled with it. “I know that new stuff is nice and all, but we’ve got so much hand-me-down stuff already that the baby’s never going to get to wear everything.”

“You have to at least think these look nice, though! And they’re, uh,” Owain grabbed the topmost onesie from the stack that Noire was holding and brought it close enough to his face so that he could read the tag on it, “they’re a lot bigger than a lot of what we have already, so that’s good! Future planning!”

“Yes, but where do we keep the things she’s not going to wear right away? We’re already tight on space as it is, and don’t even _try_ telling me that we’ll make it work, because I know that we won’t.” Giving a loud _hmph,_ Noire snatched back the clothing and threw all of it into the pile, stretching her arms out to imply she wanted something else to open. “I just want the things we need right now, that’s all.”

Looking up from the tray she was doling things out from, Severa narrowed her eyes at Noire and her diva-like behavior, understanding why she was acting how she was but not appreciating it in the slightest. “You’d be enjoying that stuff a lot more if we hadn’t given you everything we could part with from when Luna was a baby,” she grumbled, shaking her head. “Seriously, new things are probably better than used ones, appreciate them.”

“Well don’t worry, you know that you’ll have more gifts waiting for you back home that we didn’t want to unload on you here,” Lissa assured Noire, handing her the next box from the pile with a wink. “Trust me, I am _so_ going to spoil my little grandbaby as much as I possibly can, and that kind of stuff builds up over time.”

“I know you are, you’re playing the role of hands-on grandmother much better than my own mother would, but I still wish people were giving us what we really need!” Noire was already tearing into the box she’d been given, sighing dramatically when she unwrapped yet another package of clothing. It took both Lissa and Owain showing her something about the package to keep her from throwing it and sinking into a meltdown, but even then she was on the verge of becoming everyone’s worst nightmare with every following gift she opened. Something was a bit odd about how she seemed so ungrateful for what she was being given, but there was no reason to question it outwardly because she was, after all, an incredibly pregnant woman that was naturally susceptible to intense changes in behavior. Her not wanting certain things must have made sense in her mind, even if it didn’t in everyone else’s.

The strangeness about her behavior aside, the party seemed to be going smoothly, and as people started eating what they’d been given Cynthia and Severa once again slipped out of the room. It wasn’t quite time for them to start traying up actual meals, which raised a bit of a red flag in Severa’s mind when she saw Cynthia leaving again, but once they were back where no one in the room would hear them she got her explanation without having to ask for it. “I’m starting to get worried that something’s wrong with Noire, and I don’t want to tell anyone else it because I think they’ll just tell me I’m crazy for thinking so, but…” Cynthia looked to Severa for some kind of validation. “You don’t think I’m crazy, do you?”

“I wouldn’t say so, no. Something does smell a bit fishy about all of this, but I’m chalking it up to one of two things. One, Noire’s off her medication and her mind’s going all haywire trying to handle that. Two, she’s just fuc—she’s just pregnant and completely unbalanced for it.” Severa shrugged, not sure if her options were what Cynthia wanted to hear or not. “I’m going to lean towards the second one, Noire’s pretty good with making sure she’s keeping herself from losing her mind.”

“You’d know that feeling better than I would, I suppose.” Also shrugging, Cynthia looked back to the room and sighed. “I bet one of those things that she was criticizing is what miss Lissa bought for her for me, and that just makes me feel kind of bad for not buying something for her myself.”

“Probably for the best that you didn’t, you’d have gone overboard with it, and besides, it’s not like you know what they already have.” A pause, time during which Severa also looked to the room. “I don’t even know what they already have, aside from what me and Brady gave them right after they found out the baby was a she. I…honestly haven’t even been to their place since then, now that I think about it.”

“I haven’t been over there either, not in a long time. Haven’t been invited, but that’s pretty normal.” Her eyes flickered from one side to the other, before she added, “And, really, I think the only times that Inigo’s seen Owain lately have been either while they’re out or when they’re at my place. I can’t say that’s really normal, he used to spend days over at their place playing games.”

“So did Brady, although not as much as Inigo did I’m sure.” Severa twisted her mouth as she thought about the possibilities of what this all meant, but she ultimately decided not to question it. “It’s probably to do with all the prep work they’ve done, and, honestly, no one wants to spend time in an apartment filled with baby things everywhere. I have to live it in my daily life, I’d not exactly want to go hang out somewhere that’s the same cluttered mess.”

“Makes sense to me!” Laughing, Cynthia turned her attention back towards the kitchen. “Now let’s start making headway on the food for this party, I don’t want to have a single thing be wrong and ruin the party that way. I doubt your mother-in-law would tip us a cent if we screwed the meal up.”

Severa could feel anger rising within her at the mere mention of Maribelle, but she ignored it for the truth in Cynthia’s words. “You’re right, she wouldn’t, and if we’re going to make any money off this party we need to impress the hell out of Brady’s parents. Your parents and Owain’s parents too, but they’re not made of money like the others are.”

Truer words had never been spoken regarding the wealth status of the families in the room, and so it became a game of trying to make sure that if anything were to go wrong, it wouldn’t go wrong with anything that was being fed to the richer people in the group. Ultimately nothing was going to go wrong at all, and the ladies would find themselves splitting a large tip between them when the meal was over, but just because the food went out right and everything at the party halted for lunch didn’t mean that it was the end of their afternoon adventure. With the party taking up the entire section for both ladies, they could rest and focus less on being good servers and more on what was happening socially, and that meant sitting with their loved ones and enjoying the rest of the party like guests. Even with that in mind, there wasn’t that much left to the party aside from talking and enjoying the cake that had been brought and crudely decorated, which was perfectly fine in Severa’s mind. She could handle just having to listen to conversation and eating some fine baking.

After the meal was done and the dirty dishes were removed (Cynthia handled that task, as somehow Lunabel had ended up on her mom’s lap and refused to move even when she needed to get to work), the talking started up, as predicted. “I’m really happy you all came to spend the afternoon with me,” Noire said, looking at everyone there with a content smile. “I wish I had known I was coming to this, but I’m glad it happened.”

“I think I speak for everyone when I say that we’re all enjoying getting to be here for you today,” Lissa told her, scooting her chair a bit closer to Noire’s before reaching over to rest a hand on her stomach with only a slight flinch from Noire at the contact. “That’s what you get for being part of a family group like this one, lots of love and care!”

“Mom, please, not in front of everyone…” Grimacing a bit as he looked to his mother, Owain didn’t speak again until she’d apologized and retreated back to her seat, hands back in her lap. “We’re well-aware of how much everyone here cares about us, which is awesome, given that Noire’s parents don’t exactly talk to her or anything.” His grimace turned to a smile, as he got up and stood behind Noire, leaning down to rest on her back while she tilted her head up to look at him. “This day has gone over a lot better than I could’ve ever imagined it would, so thanks so much to all of you for making it happen.”

“Mama, it cake time now!” It wasn’t Lunabel asking if she could have cake so much as it was her loudly proclaiming that she was going to get some, hopping off of her mother’s lap and screeching when Severa got up after her to chase her down, trying to keep her away from the cake at all costs. The girl’s behavior broke up the sappy thank you conversation, everyone turning to chattering about wanting some cake for themselves, but no one wanted any of it as much as little Lunabel did.

She didn’t enjoy getting a tiny piece when compared to some of the others, and when she was denied any extra pieces she threw herself to the floor and started pitching the loudest fit that she possibly could. Her fists and legs flying, she kept repeating that she wanted more cake until someone took pity on her and gave her another piece, much to Severa and Brady’s dismay, because they both knew how she’d handle having it. The cycle was only going to repeat itself until she made herself sick on the sugar, but what was worse, a crying child or one that was throwing up?

Choosing to let her cry and try suckering someone into giving her a third piece of cake was what they chose, which earned a couple of raised eyebrows and a few muttered complaints, but no one was as vocal about it as Noire herself was. “Not…all kids do that when it comes to cakes, do they?” she timidly asked, bringing her arms to wrap around her stomach as best as she could. “I don’t know if I could handle that behavior regularly.”

Although Severa knew that the crying was the result of Lunabel inheriting the same sweet tooth that she had, she wasn’t going to come out and blame this on herself. “Consider yourself on the fast track to these kinds of fits all the time then, miss baker,” she said, hearing Noire’s gasp and laughing at it over the sounds of Lunabel’s still-ongoing fit. “It’s just how it is when you raise a kid around sweets like the ones you bake.”

“Then maybe I’ll just stop baking entirely.” Noire’s conclusion was the exact opposite of anything Severa wanted to hear, which turned the tables on what had just happened. Instead of getting the last laugh about freaking a friend out about the way kids behaved, she was the recipient of what sounded like the worst possible idea in the history of the world, said in a voice so sincere that it couldn’t have been a joke. “Or maybe I’ll have to, who knows. It’s probably hard to bake when raising a child.”

Without thinking about what she was saying, her mind focused on how she’d be able to remedy the problem at hand, Severa gave an offer she immediately regretted. “If that’s the case, I’ll gladly watch your kid so you can keep baking things for…everyone.” She was going to say for herself, but she couldn’t have made it sound like she was the only one who would miss if she just stopped baking entirely. “We can’t lose your gift in this world.”

The reaction she got was some awkward laughter, followed with an acceptance of the offer if the need ever arose.

* * *

Roughly a month later, in the middle of her shift at work, Severa was pulled aside by one of her managers to be let known a change in her plans for the day, that someone had called the restaurant to pass along the message that she needed to hang around after her shift for a ride rather than just walk home. She was suspicious of the message, but knowing how many different people it could have been saying that she didn’t think too much of it, accepting it for what it was. Assuming that it was her father, who’d been the one in charge of watching Lunabel for the day while both she and Brady were at work, she went on with the rest of her shift without much more thought to it.

That changed when she clocked out and went outside to sit around waiting for her ride and found her own car parked there, Brady sitting behind the wheel and looking at her like she was being slow despite not knowing he’d be there. “So, uh, how much did the person I talked to tell ya about what’s goin’ on?” he asked as she climbed in. Her silence was a good response, as she hadn’t been told anything at all, which let him dominate the conversation for a few minutes while they got on the road heading somewhere that wasn’t their apartment or either of their parents’ houses. “Figured they wouldn’t say a word, wouldn’t need ya stressin’ out about what’s happenin’.”

“I’m trying to understand why you’re here right now. You were already gone when I walked to work this morning.” Pursing her lips as she looked over at her husband, she saw him nod in agreement with her words, which only made her more curious. “You weren’t, for instance, somewhere you shouldn’t have been, were you?”

His nodding stopped as a quick headshake took its place. “No way, did my normal morning routine. Dropped Luna off with who’s watchin’ her, then headed off to work. Nothing there to be suspicious about, Sev.”

“Then what gives? Why are you not at work when you should be, taking me somewhere that I didn’t even ask to go?” Her attention turned to the area outside the car, which was filled with taller buildings that filled entire city blocks. They were getting into the heart of town, which still didn’t make any sense to her, until she noticed that he was following all the signs pointing towards the downtown hospital. “O-oh, I think I know what’s going on here.”

“Yeah, figured you’d catch on once we were gettin' closer. My uncle said we were closin’ up shop early today so he could get over there as fast as possible, but he didn’t want me comin’ until ya were off work for whatever reason.” Taking another turn that led them into an underground parking garage, Brady shrugged at what he’d just said. “It didn’t make much sense, but y’know that arguin’ with him just doesn’t work.”

“I can’t believe today’s the day,” Severa said, basically ignoring all the rambling Brady had just done. “No wonder this is all hush-hush, that poor baby wasn’t supposed to be born for another month or something like that. They must be worried sick about her.”

“I wasn’t told much about how she’s doin’, so I’d guess that might be why.” They were parking now, getting out of the car and heading to the main part of the hospital as quickly as they could. Once they were right inside, Brady pulled out his phone and looked at something on it, trying to make sense of whatever the message on his screen said. “Okay, guess we need to go upstairs to find the room. From the looks of it, we’re gonna be the first people here, aside from the obvious ones.”

Severa couldn’t help but smile at that news. “So we get to be the first not-immediate family members to meet the baby. That’s awesome! Serves us right for being so supportive throughout all of this, doesn’t it?”

“I’d say it does, definitely.” Brady reached for his wife’s hand as she gave it to him, them interlocking their fingers as they walked towards the elevator up a couple of floors to the one they wanted. They came out on the opposite side of the floor from where the nursery was, which Severa thought was a bit strange as she’d figured that most of the birthing rooms were near it, but after following the directions Brady had been given they ended up in front of a room even further from the nursery than the elevator had been.

“This doesn’t look like it’s the room of someone who’s just had a baby,” Severa stated, suspiciously looking at the bare door they were in front of, especially when compared to some of the doors around that had small decorations in either pink or blue announcing the birth of a child. “I think something’s going on here and we’re early.”

“No, believe me when I say that she’s definitely already had the kid. Never heard my uncle scream like that before today.” With a deep breath, Brady pushed open the door and found some familiar faces waiting for them on the other side, both of the people staring at him holding fingers to their lips to tell them to keep quiet. “See, would ya look at this, Sev? Right place after all.”

She couldn’t argue with him, especially not when she properly came in and saw how ecstatic the people already there seemed to be. “I’m not entirely sure I’m sold on her having had the baby already, but at least we know we didn’t get lost.”

“I’d show you the pictures of the event but, uh, they’re kind of gross and I don’t think you’d want to see those,” Owain told them, rubbing at his arm. “That was a ride that I don’t think I’d ever want to go on again, ever. So many emotions coursing through me at once! This whole ‘parenting’ thing is already an adventure and I’ve barely started.”

As he got up and met Brady halfway between their current positions for a hug, Severa looked to Noire, entirely expecting to see her just silently laying there with a sleeping child in her arms. But when she found mother sleeping and no child in sight, she grew suspicious, her mind tracking back to the bare door they’d encountered, leading her to ask, “Where’s the kid, huh? When Lunabel was born they gave her to me right away and I got to spend all sorts of time with her.”

“I’ve been asking that myself, actually,” Lissa replied, giving a quick glance towards the door. “By the time I got here, which was as soon as I possibly could, everything was already over with and there was no baby in sight. And since we have no idea _when_ we’ll get to meet the little princess,” she stifled a laugh at the nickname, “and it was such a rushed thing getting over here that we didn’t bring any balloons or anything, Vaike decided he’d go out and get something to celebrate. But it’s been an hour already since he left, I’ve got no clue where he might’ve gotten off to…”

“I’m not pulling a search party for him.” To drive her point home, Severa simply sat down in the empty seat next to Lissa, her eyes still looking Noire over. “Besides, I’m sure wherever he is has a lot more going on than here does.”

“I get that you’re not happy to come in to nothing happening, but please be respectful of my mother, Severa,” Owain told her, breaking from his hug to sit back in his own seat, drawing his legs up to wrap his arms around them. “You’ll get to meet her when the time’s right, which might be soon or it might not, who knows!”

Under her breath, not intending to be heard, Severa grumbled, “Judging by how there’s nothing on the door here, I’m going to go with it not being any time soon at all.”

“There’s nothing on the door? Did he really take those down when he left?” Rushing to her feet to go investigate on what she’d heard, Lissa’s statement left Owain going a bit wide-eyed for a second while Brady and Severa exchanged a look between them that was of pure confusion, trying to tell just how much they were reading into what she’d said.

“Uh, don’t mind if I’m askin’ too much here, but what else was on the door besides the little thing they put on all the doors?” Brady ended up asking Owain, having lost the silent argument between himself and Severa on who was going to do it. “Knowin’ you, it could’ve been a whole lot of things.”

“We’d made a sign to go along with the one they provided, so you’d know you were coming to the right room, but I didn’t realize that when Dad left he took that with him.” Owain tilted his head a bit forward, letting it rest on one of his knees. “It’s been one crazy day already, I’m sure he didn’t do it to be spiteful or anything.”

When Lissa came back into the room, she didn’t have with her any signs or her wayward husband, but she did have another family member following behind her. “I found Lucina wandering around looking for the room,” she explained, stepping aside so that her niece could come fully into everyone’s view. “She at least made a stop to get something before she dropped by, which I think will be appreciated.”

“Yes, well, I wanted to make sure there was some brightness in the room at all times,” Lucina explained, shuffling her feet as she adjusted the small vase of flowers in her hands. “I did the honors of letting Inigo know what’s happened while I was picking these out, by the way,” she told Owain, him perking his head back up to nod in understanding at her. “He said he might be by after he gets off work, but he didn’t want to come in until you gave him the all-clear on it.”

“I’ll get right on telling him he can come by once everyone who’s already here has gotten to see what they’ve come for,” Owain laughed, one of his laughs fading into a sigh as he looked to Noire and how she was still asleep. “Gods I hope they don’t expect her to be awake for this, if I’ve had a day already she’s had it so much worse.”

“Aw, but I’d want to see her holding her baby,” Lucina said, setting the vase down on the first countertop she saw so that she could free her hands to reach into a bag over her shoulder. “Laurent gave me the camera so I could take a professional, baby book-worthy picture of the moment.”

“I’m awake,” they all heard Noire say, as she rolled her head and neck to show everyone how close to asleep she actually was. She slowly opened her eyes, trying to look at all the people present, and she smiled when she saw that there were quite a few familiar faces there. “This is so strange, I figured it would be so few of you here when I woke up.”

Unwrapping his arms from his legs so he was sitting in his chair properly, Owain gave a long sigh as he watched Noire very tiredly trying to move around in the bed. “They’re all here because they’re eager to meet a certain someone,” he reminded her, reaching out for the side of her bed and grabbing onto it. “Except my dad, I think he got lost or might’ve found some other family to play with.”

“Better than my family, my parents don’t have a clue that any of this is going on.” Hearing Noire say that wasn’t much of a surprise, everyone knowing the story of her family well enough to know that she might just try keeping her child secret from them for the rest of time. “I can’t imagine how they’d take this news, honestly. It’s a lot to take in.”

“I know they’re apparently crazy as hell, but I bet they’d take it about as well as Ma did when she first found out about Luna, huh?” Brady whispered to Severa, who nearly snorted at the idea. “Can’t imagine anythin’ goin’ over much worse than that did.”

A knock at the door caught everyone’s attention, a whole bundle of balloons entering the airspace that were quickly cause for some suspicious eyebrow raises. “Oh would you look at that, we found your father,” Lissa said, looking to Owain as he went from trying to say something to sighing (in what sounded like relief) at what he saw. “Guess he didn’t get too lost after all.”

“How many shops did you have to hit to find all those?” he ended up asking, going from checking out the balloons to looking at his father’s face that was lit up in happiness. “You did an amazing job on that, Dad. We appreciate it, a whole lot!”

“Oh, it only took one store, once I was out ‘a the big city and could actually stop somewhere,” Vaike replied, tying the balloons to the first tie-able surface he found before heading to sit in the only other open spot in the room, a hard-looking chair situated right between his wife and son. “Lemme just say that neither ‘a you ever tell me t’look for such specific things again in my life. That woulda been so much easier if I coulda just picked whatever I wanted.”

“Specific things…?” Her eyes focusing on the balloons and drowning out any conversation that was struck up with the new presence, Severa couldn’t help but notice something about every balloon in the bunch, something that no one else seemed bothered by. With that in mind, she motioned for Brady to lean down close enough for her to whisper into his ear, “Uh, B, they’re all gender-neutral. I think something’s going on here, and I don’t want to ask about it, but I’m thinking they got duped on what the baby was.”

After the initial shock of her suggestion wore off, Brady also looked to the balloons and could make sense of what she was saying. “That is really strange, especially since everythin’ at the baby shower was bright pink,” he replied, “but maybe they just wanted a little less pink stuff in their lives?”

“I don’t know if I want to believe that,” Severa said, raising her voice so that more than just Brady would hear her. “I think someone needs to tell us what’s going on here, because I think there’s something weird happening.”

The room fell silent, everyone’s conversations dying off at the assertion that anything was going on. While Severa looked around at all the faces, everyone there acting like they didn’t know what was going on, she missed the new knock at the door followed by the sound of wheels rolling across the floor, but she was quickly set to paying attention when Brady softly hit her on the arm with his fist and a hushed “Sev, look!”

It was about time that they’d brought the baby into the room, the attached devices taking up enough space to make the room feel incredibly more cramped than it already had. But for some reason, a reason that was just beginning to click in both Brady and Severa’s minds, they’d brought _two_ babies in. “So, uh, presenting the greatest secret anyone in this family’s ever managed to keep,” Owain said in introduction, while everyone else who was sitting was getting to their feet and those already on their feet were crowding around the two separate baby carriers. “Which really wasn’t a secret to most of you here, but you sure helped us keep it secret from the rest.”

“My babies…” Noire was trying to sit herself up to see them, but when she found herself unable to do so comfortably the doctors wheeled the children closer to her, everyone else still trying to get a good look. She smiled down at them when she got the chance, tears welling in her eyes as she reached towards them and their almost-identical newborn faces. “My sweet daughter Ophelia and my darling son Odin…”

It was a touching and completely shocking moment to witness (for some of them, anyway), only marginally ruined by Owain beaming and letting everyone know that he’d come up with those names all on his own. But even that disconnect from the moment couldn’t change the fact that those two had managed to make it so many months with only letting a handful of people, all of whom were present then, know about there being two babies instead of one.


	2. Shaking the Wedding Bells

The initial shock of the reveal that there had been two babies didn’t fade right away; after everyone who had been kept in the dark was informed and had gotten their chance to meet the babies for themselves, it still didn’t feel real to anyone aside from those who had known all along. It wasn’t quite able to sink in as a reality until a few weeks after their birth when they were finally brought home, because while everyone had been mentally preparing themselves to assist with one baby, being called in the middle of the night to help problem-solve for two of them was an entirely different story.

Add in the fact that everyone, to some extent, had their own lives to be handling outside of rushing over to help Noire and Owain out before either of them got to be too stressed, and it was a mess of an experience. “I don’t know how we’re going to do anything relating to your wedding while we’re having to bounce between work and watching the twins,” Severa simply told Cynthia one day in passing while they were at work, one of them just arriving at the job for the day while the other was getting ready to leave. “It’s almost like you’re getting pushed to the side because they couldn’t keep it in their pants.”

“Don’t talk about them like that, I don’t even see it like being pushed to the side. I’m just having to get creative with my planning, which is totally okay!” Pressing her hands to her cheeks, Cynthia squealed, “Besides, how can I be upset when I’m getting to spend time with two adorable babies? So maybe I’d like to be getting to plan everything for when the big day comes, but babies are always a good second option.”

Rolling her eyes, Severa looked straight at her friend and shook her head. “No, they’re really not. They grow up and become little terrors. Take it from me, you don’t want to get involved with them, no matter how much you think you do. I really hope this whole damn situation makes you really rethink having kids anytime soon.” Based on how Cynthia looked at her so sheepishly after that statement, she was pretty sure it wasn’t the case, but she had to have hope. “I’m going to be so disappointed in you if you end up getting knocked up on your wedding day after all. Like, seriously. It’s cute when it’s someone else’s kid, but when it’s your own having you up at three in the morning…”

“You’re not even the one who goes over there in the middle of the night because you ‘don’t wanna abandon Luna’ or something, even though Brady would totally still be there to watch her.” Cynthia pouted her bottom lip out for a few seconds before bursting into giggles. “I just want you to know that there’s no reason to worry about me having kids anytime soon, watching the twins is good enough for me for now.”

As her friend walked away to get to work, Severa shook her head and muttered, “For now my ass, you’re so going to tell me a month after your wedding that you’re pregnant and that I was right all along.” She tried to avoid contact with Cynthia for the rest of her shift, heading home the moment she could with no intentions of doing anything but spending the evening chilling with her family. That plan changed not five minutes after letting herself into the apartment and finding it completely empty, when she got a call asking if she could help watch the twins for just a couple hours, and despite her not wanting to do it she said that she could and would do it.

A couple hours would’ve turned into an entire overnight if Severa wasn’t the rude person she was, demanding to be allowed to go home rather than being stuck babysitting all night when she could be with her own child. It wasn’t a very pretty confrontation, and there was a lot of screaming to be had with it (not even necessarily the screaming of children, at that), but in the end she was given her way and so she got to go home to a half-asleep daughter and a husband who was ready to head to bed himself. “Come on, you two can’t already be tired,” she complained when she saw how Lunabel was curled up in her father’s lap on the couch, Brady brushing the girl’s hair with his fingers. “Weren’t we supposed to get to have family time tonight?”

“We were, yeah,” he replied, “but then things happened and, well, ya know what you ended up having to do instead of spending time with us.” His voice was soft, trying not to disturb the girl that was quickly falling asleep on him. “I bet everyone else appreciated what ya were doing, though, so there’s that.”

“I yelled at them until they let me leave, because apparently asking me to watch the kids for a couple hours was allowed to turn into ‘hey let’s have a makeshift date night’ without asking me if _that_ was okay at all.” Flopping down on the couch next to Brady with a sigh, Severa looked at him with exasperation in her face, and all she got back was him looking mildly unamused. “Okay, what’s with the look?”

“Did you not notice me tryin’ to keep it down for Luna’s sake?” He was still stroking the girl’s hair, even as she was lifting her head to tiredly look up at her mom. “Come on Sev, I know you’re upset but you really should have thought about how bein’ loud wasn’t going to work when Luna’s trying to sleep.”

When the girl started giving low whines as she realized she was still awake and not drifting off to sleep, Severa could feel pangs of guilt within her, leading her to reach for Lunabel to hold her herself. “I guess I thought she’d keep quiet and stay sleeping even with me talking,” she said, beginning to run her fingers through the short blue hair on the girl’s head. “Sorry to wake you, baby.”

“’m not a baby,” Lunabel rebutted, pouting her lower lip out while stifling a yawn. “Luna a big girl, Mama.”

“Even when you’re dead tired you still have the energy to correct someone on that. What a surprise.” Severa let her daughter curl up in her lap now that she was holding her, listening to the muffled responses Lunabel gave to what had been said before she fell back asleep. “I can’t believe I’m about to say this, Brady, but we’ve raised a monster.” Watching the gentle raise and fall of the girl’s body as she slept, Severa shook her head. “She’s going to grow up correcting people on everything, and everyone’s going to hate her for it, and so she’s going to hate everyone and—gods, what if she ends up being just like me because of it?”

“Just because she hates being called baby? I think it’ll all be fine, Sev, don’t worry about it.” Stretching his arms and wrapping one of the around Severa so he could let it rest on her arm while she still stroked Lunabel, he took a moment of admiring the two before he said anything else to her. “And, even if she does end up being like you, where’s the problem with that? I love ya, isn’t that enough to show that you’re fine?”

She glanced over at him as he gave a small shrug, before she let out a long sigh in defeat. “I guess you’ve got a point there, even if it’s completely weak. I could name the people who actually like me on two hands, and I don’t want Luna to have that same problem when she’s older. I want her to actually have friends.”

“And she will have friends! Didn’t ya just spend most of tonight watchin’ two of them?” Brady laughed as he watched Severa’s face show that she had fallen further into defeat, having not even considered those twins as possible friends for Luna to have. “Yeah, they’re distant family to her, but family can be friends. Look at me and Owain, for example, we’re cousins and the best friends anyone could ask for.”

“You’re also both great at causing trouble for yourselves and others,” Severa quickly replied, worming her left hand out from where she had it under Lunabel to quickly flash Brady with a glimpse of her ring. “This wouldn’t have happened if you weren’t such great friends, remember? Besides…” She paused her thought and got her hand back under Lunabel as the girl shifted around, realizing that something had changed about her position. “Well, you know they’re more distantly related than you and Owain are. Since you two are cousins, that makes the kids second cousins.”

“How do you know that off the top of your head?” Brady asked, a bit in awe that she had a name for the relationship the kids all shared without needing to think about it. “Did ya do some research on that without me looking or something?”

Severa’s face went blank before she quickly looked down to Lunabel, not wanting to give anything away with her eyes. Even still, her fake voice she put on as she said, “No, I just happened to know that from somewhere,” was oddly suspicious, but Brady was just tired enough to not try and get any more information about it from her.

They ended up falling asleep on the couch for a short amount of time, until Lunabel woke up and proceeded to wake them both up as well to put her into her bed so she could properly sleep. That was their cue to head to bed themselves, and without so much as another attempt at conversation they were both drifting off once more; when morning came they laughed off their first attempt at sleeping before getting into the meat of their day, a cycle that would only happen more and more as time went on. Gone were the nights when Severa would actually get to spend waking time with her family, as she was either having to work or go watch some babies because their parents weren’t able to handle it, and on the off chance that she was absolutely free she was trying her hardest to get to be of some use to Cynthia in her wedding planning.

That really didn’t work out very well, although the two did learn that if they both offered to babysit on the same night, they could plan between bouts of crying and fussing, which made things a bit easier on them. By some stroke of luck, they got the meat of the planning that was on Cynthia’s shoulders done with about a month to spare, passing the rest of it off on her parents (who were overjoyed to get to help out), and with that commitment taken care of it was back to trying to live life in a way that time just wouldn’t allow for anymore.

The wedding was set for mid-afternoon on New Year’s Eve, and the day before that it was arranged so that the final preparations were made and everyone was where they needed to be, so that early in the day the next day those necessary to the ceremony could show up and do some practice runs before the guests filed in. For whatever reason, possibly because Cynthia wanted to not have to worry about hiding her dress from her to-be husband any longer, or possibly because Severa wanted to get a head-start on doing her hair and makeup before they even got to the hotel where the wedding was going to be, it was decided that the bride would be spending her last night of being single on the couch in Severa’s apartment, getting to chat her nerves away with good friends before the big day.

With that arrangement in mind, Severa had offered to be the one to go get all the things they needed from everywhere across town when she’d gotten off work that day, to help Cynthia out from the last-minute stresses. She didn’t expect to literally have to go all across town to get everything she needed, from her friend’s parents’ house to get a bunch of little supplies over to her friend’s own house to get her dress (and skillfully avoid Inigo in the process, as he wasn’t at work himself for obvious reasons), and many places in-between. But what was most worthy of a headshake was not the cross-town driving: it was the fact that, when she got up to her own front door, she heard the unmistakable crying of a grown woman.

“What the hell’s going on in here?” she asked as she was opening the door, holding everything she could in one arm with the dress bag draped across her shoulder. “Why am I hearing—Cynthia? What are you doing here?” When she looked to the couch and saw her friend laying on it, face buried in a pillow, her instinct was to drop everything as fast as she could to try and be comforting, but damn it she’d spent precious time and money getting all that stuff. “What’s wrong? The wedding’s still happening, isn’t it?”

“Sev, this isn’t the time for those kinds of questions,” Brady told her, reaching to grab some of the things from her so that she had free use of both arms. “When I got here after work she was sitting outside ready to burst into tears, I think it’s the stress of everything finally gettin' to her.”

“How long ago did you get off work?” The answer came with a serious look, Brady choosing to avoid giving any words but rather a stare that let Severa know it had been long enough before the current time. “So what you’re saying is that she could’ve come with me after all. Come on, Cynthia, whatever’s bothering you can’t be that bad.”

Cynthia, lifting the pillow off her face and showing blotchy-skinned cheeks and red-rimmed eyes, gave a meek shake of her head. “I’m pretty sure I’d have cried just as hard if I had to see my parents today,” she choked out, another sob coursing through her body. “It’s a huge mess and it’s all my fault.”

Taking a moment to get the dress off her shoulder and throw it onto Brady’s, Severa took a seat next to her friend and snatched the pillow from her hands, tossing it across the room where it hit the wall and landed on one of Lunabel’s toys, causing a loud jingle to play. Whatever it was she was planning on saying, the peppy tone reminded her that she hadn’t seen or heard her daughter once in the moments she’d been home, which was rather odd. “Hey, is Luna sleeping or something right now?” She looked over to Brady, who shook his head. “Where is she then?”

“Ma came and got her, since she knew we’d be helpin’ out with the whole wedding thing. She’ll be at the ceremony tomorrow, but we get the next two nights without her.” As he was answering he was trying to find somewhere safe to hang the dress from, not wanting it to get crinkled or anything by being set somewhere haphazardly.

“Huh, well that’s a new one, her being borrowed without my permission.” Shrugging, Severa’s attention shifted back to Cynthia, noticing that she was once again crying fairly hard. “Now what’s the matter with you? Starting to get second thoughts about marrying a guy you met on the job? I mean, sure, he’s friends with people we both know, but we didn’t know him until—“

“It’s nothing to do with getting married tomorrow.” Cynthia sighed, her whole body shaking as she did so. “But it wouldn’t be a problem if I wasn’t _getting_ married tomorrow.” One of her hands, trembling as she lifted it, reached to grab Severa’s hand, which she was more than happy to offer to her friend if it meant being of some help. “My parents are going to kill me when they find out about this…”

“Find out about what?” An eyebrow raising, Severa waited for a response with baited breath, but when she didn’t get anything but another sob, she sighed. “Come on, trying to be the good friend here, you’ve got to give me something to work with.”

“Promise you can keep a secret?” The question came with Cynthia’s voice incredibly small, like she was ashamed to be having to ask what she just had. She looked at Severa with her teary eyes, before looking towards Brady and seeing that he too was looking at Severa. “Both of you, please, can you promise me that?”

He spoke first, his eyes not lifting off of his wife even as he was talking. “I know we can do it, we’ve always been the ones to have secrets ruined for us, but never by us. But it’s not really up to only me on this one.”

“I don’t know how you can ask us to keep a secret for you when you’re the one who ruined one of our biggest secrets,” Severa added, feeling the weight of the decision being placed on her shoulders. “At the same time, though, you are my friend and if you’re expecting to keep this secret yourself, maybe having people who are good at not running their mouths know would be a good idea.”

Despite her being tearful and emotionally distraught, Cynthia couldn’t help but break out into a smile at Severa’s words. “It’s funny that you mention that one secret I ruined,” she said, squeezing her friend’s hand, “because that’s kind of sort of what I’m telling you about.”

“You’re… _really_?” Taken aback by what she’d just heard, Severa jerked her hand out of Cynthia’s and raised it up in front of her face, covering her mouth and nose with it as she processed what her friend had said. “Oh gods, Cynthia, I thought you were smarter than this! What made you think this was okay? What are you going to do about it? You’re in a whole bunch of trouble the second your parents put two and two together on this one.”

“N-no, please, don’t remind me about that!” Her crying was picking up intensity again as she flopped over onto her side, resting her head against the armrest of the couch while she tried putting together words through her tears. “It was a mistake, we’d both been so good at covering all our bases since we’d gotten engaged, but we must’ve slipped up one time and…and now my parents are going to murder me when they find out I was sleeping with a guy before I was married.”

“Is there even a way to keep that part hidden forever?” Brady asked, trying to make any use of his limited knowledge about this kind of stuff. “Like, I remember lists of possible days and all that kind of nonsense from when Sev first found out. Lucy and Laurent seemed to have had lots of fun figurin’ that out.”

“Lucina was the first person I went to on this, honestly,” Cynthia admitted, sniffling after she spoke. “I knew she’d be of help like she was for you two, and she…said she’d try and help me come up with some cover-up for everything but…”

Severa snorted, amused at what she’d just heard. “Oh she’ll help you all right, until your father realizes something’s off with the dates and the math and then you get called out on your lying. If you’re going to get out of this safely, you’re going to need to find someone to cover your ass the entire time, and I doubt you’re going to be able to find anyone who just happens to be pregnant starting, like, now.”

“So you’re saying I’m screwed no matter what?”

“I’m saying that you’re completely boned, yeah. I hope sleeping with him before you got married was worth it.” The grin Severa put on as she dropped her hand from her face was supposed to show that she was joking, but combined with what she’d said it was only making the situation worse. She could hear Cynthia’s crying get harder as she worked through what she’d done wrong, which she’d been hoping wouldn’t have been the case. Couldn’t she have just accepted that mistakes were made and move on from them? At least she was getting married within a day’s time, so it wasn’t like the child was being born out of wedlock or anything like that; there was no real reason for her parents to get too upset at this.

“Severa, I don’t think you handled this very well.” It wasn’t always that Brady referred to her with her full first name, but when he did he meant business by it. “Why don’t ya go into the room and think about what you’ve done, while I try comforting Cynthia for a bit.”

“You’re seriously not kicking me out from helping my friend, are you?” Looking offended at the mere idea that she wasn’t being of any help, Severa glared at Brady while he pointed towards their bedroom, a no-nonsense look on his face. “Oh come on, this is bullshit. You can’t kick me out from helping, you let her cry the entire time before I got here!”

“Yeah, and? Now that I know what’s going on, I can at least try helping her work through things.” The direction he was pointing still hadn’t changed, and it didn’t until she was up and storming off to the room, looking back at him several times with her tongue sticking out in defiance. Once the door was closed and she wasn’t around to make any more harmful comments, he sat down in her spot and opened his arms for Cynthia to come into if she wanted a hug, something she refused as she continued laying on her side. “Hey now, it’s all going to be okay. If I could survive Ma findin’ out about me and Sev being together, you can survive a little slip like this.”

Cynthia lifted her head, rubbing at her eyes as she did. “A little slip? Brady, I did exactly what we were all taught not to do when we were little and I slept with a guy before I got married. Sure, we knew we were getting married when we did it, but it still happened! My parents are going to freak out and kill me for it!”

“I’m sure they’ll be able to look past it, since you are getting married and all that.” He wiggled both his arms, gesturing for her to take up that hug offer again. “You’ve got Lucy helping you out on this one, she’s a lifesaver when it comes to learnin’ how to cover your tracks for a little while. And who knows, maybe whatever she does will work out for you all the way until the end.”

“You’re right, maybe it will. I just have to believe in my friends who know what’s going on.” Cracking a smile, Cynthia sat up, only to lean over into Brady’s arms, which he wrapped around her tightly. “Thanks for being a good brother-like friend for me,” she said, taking in a deep breath, even though it was quite shaky. “Once tomorrow’s over, it’s time to really think about how to make it seem like, uh, I didn’t get pregnant a month-ish before I got married.”

“That’s a pretty heavy thing to be dwellin’ on right now, so just push it from your mind for now.” With a sigh, Brady turned to look towards the bedroom door that was still firmly shut. “Sev would be much better at helping with this, if she wasn’t being such a bitch about things for whatever reason she’s got. I’ll talk to her about maybe trying to help ya out a bit better, but, again, not until after tomorrow.”

“I think I could use all the help I can get on this one.” Her smile growing a bit bigger, Cynthia added, “But, at the same time, don’t go super out of your way to help me out, you know? Don’t make it obvious I messed up.”

With a laugh, Brady assured her, “If I’m gonna make it obvious anyone messed up, it’ll be Inigo, because as far as I’m concerned here he’s the one who screwed everythin’ up by, well, you know.”

“By screwing me, yeah, I know.” The sound of Cynthia genuinely laughing, a happy sound after all her crying, let Brady know that his attempt at comforting her had been helpful. And from the other side of the wall, listening in to what she’d been excluded from, Severa rolled her eyes and grumbled something about how compassion when someone messed up on their own might not have been the best course of action, even if they were friends.

* * *

The ceremony came and went without any hiccups or issues, everything that could have gone wrong being addressed in the quick practice session just hours before the real deal happened. Despite having spent most of the previous night crying, there was no sign of distress with Cynthia as she dazzled everyone who had gathered there for her special day, impressing everyone (but her groom most of all) with the way she carried herself down the aisle and to the altar. Everyone else, in their limited positions, couldn’t have dared make as much of a mark on the day as the beautiful bride did, minus possibly the overenthusiastic officiant who made a spectacle of delivering his words.

Due to the perfectly-picked location for the wedding, a ballroom at one of the pricier hotels in town, there was a built-in space for the reception and everything to follow, hotel workers coming in to rearrange the way the room was set up in the minutes directly following the ceremony. This meant that everyone who was there for the ceremony itself had no excuse to miss out on the reception as well, which led to a lot of people-watching from the sides of the room as the workers quickly changed the layout. Or, as the members of the limited wedding party were doing, there was people-watching from just outside the room, looking in through the open doors while they waited to be told to bring the bride and groom back in.

“Okay, there’s a lot more people here than I expected would actually be able to make it,” Brady remarked at Severa, who was doing anything but looking back into the room. “Never would’ve guessed your folks and mine both would show up. Figured it would be one or the other, ya know?”

“Of course both our parents showed up,” she replied, still not looking in the room as she slumped against the wall, ruffling up the back of her dress as she slid down to a half-sitting position. “My mom’s best friends with Cynthia’s mom, and your dad’s best friends with her dad, she spent a lot of time with both our families growing up, they’re basically instant invites to this kind of thing. Besides, can you imagine the outrage if your dad didn’t come to this? Mayor skips out on an event he was invited to? No one in there would’ve let him live it down if he decided to work or something.”

“Just like no one would’ve let your dad live it down if he spent today in jail?” He fully expected the loud _hmph_ he got in response to that question, causing him to chuckle. “Just sayin’, it could’ve happened.”

“I know it could have, I just don’t want to think about it. He’s done good this year, we’ve got to hope he doesn’t go back again ever.” Her lips pursing together as she thought about her father, Severa looked over to Brady and saw that he was still watching in the room, his eyes focused on something inside. “Someone got your attention or what?” she asked, tilting her head to one side. “You’re awfully distracted by something going on in there.”

He shook his head, still not pulling his eyes from whatever it was he was watching. “No, it’s nothin’ like that, Sev. I’m just…well, I’m really just making sure that no one’s lettin’ Luna get anywhere near the cake they just pulled out.”

“Cake? They brought the cake out?” Getting to her feet as fast as she could, nearly ripping the hem of her dress by stepping on it as she stood, Severa went straight to watching in the room herself, seeing that the entire atmosphere had changed and the room was filled with decorated tables rather than rows of chairs. What she didn’t see, though, was any sign of a cake, although she could see her father milling around part of the room that went beyond her range of vision, Lunabel in his arms as he walked. “I don’t see it. Brady, are you lying to me about _cake_?”

“I’d think I’d know better than to do that,” he told her, laughing at how fast she’d gotten up, before he tapped the wall he was against with his hand. “It’s on the other side of the wall here, which means that until we’re allowed back in, you’re not gettin' anywhere close to—Sev? What are ya doing?” Even though they weren’t supposed to enter the room without the bride and groom with them, Severa was already going ahead and going back in, if only to see the cake, leaving Brady there to sigh. “Gods damn it, you’re ruining everything.”

She made it two steps into the room, everyone inside falling silent as her appearance was supposed to bring the appearance of the newly-married couple, but when all she did was come inside, look at the elaborate and overly-decorated wedding cake, and then leave, people were confused. Most of them went back to what they’d already been doing, finding seats at tables and getting ready for the reception to properly begin, but when Maribelle saw her daughter-in-law come in for that moment, her eyes narrowed and she did what she did best: followed her right out to start a scene.

“While I may not have been part of any of the planning of today’s festivities,” she started, stopping right beside Severa and catching the dirty look the younger woman was giving her, “I’m fairly certain that you coming inside the room was supposed to have meant something. Did you happen to get impatient, not liking having to follow rules set for you by others?”

“I wanted to see the cake,” Severa bluntly replied, turning so that Maribelle had no chance of seeing her sour expression. “And I got to see it, so where’s the damn problem here?”

Naturally, Maribelle had an answer for that, one that involved putting her hand on Severa’s shoulder and trying to pull her to look at her. “The problem here is that you got a lot of people’s hopes up about what was about to happen, and now you’re going to have to explain why that is to everyone.”

“No I’m not, I doubt anyone even cares that I stepped in for a moment to see the cake before my father or my daughter destroy it.” Rolling her eyes, Severa gave into Maribelle’s insistent jerking of her shoulder to get her attention, glaring at the older woman as they stared into each other’s face. “Why don’t you go back inside and talk to all your old people friends who are here only because Cynthia thought it would be polite to invite her parents’ friends?”

“Sev, that’s not how you should be talking to Ma,” Brady said with a warning tone, as he watched the two in the middle of their stare-down. “She’s got a point, ya shouldn’t have gone in like that and I shouldn’t have said anything about the cake and—“

“Brady dearest, this isn’t the time or the place for you to be stepping in to control your street-rat wife.” Her words coming out completely flat and serious, Maribelle raised her free hand, turning it to face her son, and clamped her fingers shut, making him wince at the sight. “I have got this under control right now, you be a dear and continue watching for what you’re watching for.”

While he resigned himself to what his mother demanded, Severa was having none of how Maribelle had just treated either one of them. “Seriously, I do one thing a little bit ‘wrong’ and you’re out here criticizing us both for it? What the fuck is your problem, huh? Why is it always that we can’t do anything right in your mind?”

“You can do things right, and you have many times! Why, I can’t imagine a world anymore without that sweet granddaughter of mine in it, and you’re partially to thank for that!” Her voice might have been softening, but it was clear that Maribelle wasn’t anywhere close to done with her verbal lashing. “But your behavior is…often times it’s not appropriate for the person you should be. You’re quite the interesting one, Severa.”

“I don’t like the way you say my name.” Finally taking it upon herself to push Maribelle’s hand off of her shoulder, Severa was left facing the consequence of Maribelle grabbing part of her lightly-curled hair and tugging it hard as she retracted her hand. “Ow! What was that for? My mother’s a police officer, I could have you arrested right now! Want me ruining someone’s wedding day because you decided to assault me?”

Uncurling her fingers from the hair she’d tugged, Maribelle smiled. “I wouldn’t consider that assault, darling. Tough love, perhaps, and if given the chance I am positive your mother would agree with me on that.”

“You don’t know my mother well enough to make that judgment. She’s arrested my dad for the stupidest things before, I’m sure tugging a woman’s hair would make her reach for her cuffs in a second!” Smirking, Severa was making the motions to cup her mouth to call for her mother, but she hesitated when she saw Maribelle’s smile fade away and a long sigh come from her mouth. “Uh, normally this is where you snap back at me with something to make me come up with something worse to throw at you. What’s wrong?”

“Clearly you being raised in a family of officials and criminals gave you some warped sense of justice.” Shaking her head as she sighed again, Maribelle turned to look towards Brady, who had gone back to doing as he was supposed to be and was watching for the returning people. “I don’t understand how a woman like you could be seen as attractive to someone as charming and intelligent as my son, but…”

“We’re seriously at a wedding between a perky and adorable girl and a known womanizer of a man, are you really going to criticize the relationship between me and your son?” Severa had her eyebrows raised and she was looking at Maribelle, stunned that this was the actual conversation they were happening. “Come on, give it a break, will you? We didn’t do a single thing wrong ever, minus the part where we got married behind everyone’s backs and all that, but was that really wrong?”

“Sometimes your words come off like stones at glass houses,” Maribelle said as she turned her attention back to Severa, watching as she shrugged off what she’d been told, “which isn’t a compliment to you at all. You do know that old proverb, don’t you?”

Brushing her hair back into place, making sure no damage had been done when it had been pulled, Severa casually replied, “I’ve heard it before, sure, but I don’t see why you’re talking about it right now.”

“Because you are always so quick to criticize others, but you’re never one to handle the same criticisms back at yourself. It’s merely me remarking on your almost stubbornness to be the one with the last word in these arguments. One of these days, karma will get you for some of the things you’ve done, and I won’t bat a single eyelash at how it decides to make you pay.” Plastering a fake smile on her face, Maribelle turned away from Severa without saying anything further, heading back into the room before she gave herself the chance to try and shoulder more anger from the younger woman.

“I don’t know what Ma was getting at there with that one, Sev, but she’s kinda got a point. You’re always okay with judgin’ others, but it’s never fine when someone does it to you.” As he spoke, Brady was making sure to be looking anywhere but at his wife, so he couldn’t see how her jaw was dropping at how he was taking his mother’s side over hers. “Like, when it comes to people caring for their kids, or even havin’ them, you’re always judging them for it, but if someone judged you, or us, about anything relatin’ to Luna, you’d have their head for even thinkin’ it.”

After a moment of letting his words sink in, Severa closed her mouth and shook her head at what she’d heard, deciding that what he was saying was completely stupid and that it had no truth to it whatsoever. She knew she was a great mom, but if someone had tried telling her she wasn’t she would have at least given them a chance to explain themselves; everyone else wasn’t as great as her and that’s just how it was. “It’s not my fault that no one’s as good at things as we are,” she finally said in response, hearing Brady’s groan at her words. “Well, it’s true! We’re the way we are because we’re the best as everything we do, they can’t help it that they’re not.”

“I think Ma’s right, one of these days you’re gonna get got for those kinds of things. Now hush and act like nothing’s been happening, I see Lucy coming this way, which has to mean that it’s about to be time.” He straightened up, putting on a smile as his older sister approached them both, one of those fancy cameras in her hand as she looked completely amused at something that she’d just seen. “What’s with the funny look, Lucy? Weren’t ya just taking pictures?”

She had to tilt her head back to be able to look straight into her brother’s eyes, but Lucina held no punches with her response. “Oh I was just taking pictures, but you know those two. Couldn’t keep their hands off of each other for a second once they were alone in that room with me. Maybe I should’ve charged them for a more intimate shoot, rather than the one I am charging them for.” She waved her camera around before side-stepping towards the door. “Now don’t mind me, I need to get into position to take pictures of their grand first appearance to everyone as a married couple.”

“You, uh, have fun with that,” he said as he watched her slide into the room, leaving it to be only him and Severa outside once more. Looking back at her and seeing how she was once again slumping against the wall, he chose not to question what was going on with her and instead went back to watching for the people they were waiting on, knowing that their appearance should have been coming at any moment. Once again, though, it was someone else he saw before them, even though this person was the only other person of note aside from them that was gone.

“So at some point today, before everyone leaves and we’re left here without anyone responsible to keep tabs on where this goes, we’re all going to have to sign the official paperwork,” Owain was saying as he came up to the door, not speaking to anyone else but himself. As he approached, he seemed to be pulled from his thoughts at the presence of other people outside the room. “I just hope I actually received the—oh hey there, Brady! Hey Severa! What are you two doing out here?”

“Waiting on Inigo and Cynthia to come back, what are you doing out here?” He didn’t really need his cousin’s answer, because he knew why Owain had left right after the ceremony had ended. He knew that Owain had wanted to be there as the “creative mind” for when Lucina was taking the newlyweds’ pictures, and he was expecting his cousin to tell him that in a lot more words than necessary. But when he got no answer at all, he had to look at the blond man standing before him, confused as to what was keeping him quiet.

The sounds of the train of a dress dragging along the floor filled the air, giggling and light conversation accompanying it. “I shouldn’t be out here right now,” Owain mumbled, shaking his head to break himself from watching the bride and groom’s approach back to the room. “Good luck on showing them off to everyone, you two! We’ll have to talk later to get those official papers signed!” With that he was nearly running inside, trying not to cause a scene but ultimately doing just that, which led people to start congregating around the door as they waited for what was to come.

“Looks like it’s about time for this celebration to begin, eh?” Stepping to just outside of the line of sight of anyone in the room, Inigo was adjusting how a single flower was displayed from his pocket, while Cynthia, beaming like she was happier than she’d ever been, was clinging to his arm and looking at him with wide, admiring eyes. “Bet everyone’s ready to see us make our entrance and start the festivities.”

“I guess you’d be able to say that,” Brady replied with a nod, looking at the two and feeling nothing but happiness for them both. Across from him, Severa was also focused on them, although with her disgusted expression it might not have been happiness she was feeling. “It’s going to be a good time once you’re in there, judgin’ by how everyone’s waiting for it to happen. Do ya think you’re gonna get crowded around right away?”

“That, my friend, is what you two are out here for, to keep that from happening.” His confidence in the planning was obvious in how he spoke, and once his flower adjustments were made and a gentle kiss was planted on his new wife’s cheek, causing her to giggle, Inigo’s eyes were turned to the door. “Both of you, take your positions, will you?”

“Remind me to never take part in anything you’re in charge of again,” Severa grumbled as she and Brady both did as they’d been told, standing side-by-side in between the open doorway and where the bride and groom were. Without speaking, their only communication their gesture of locking arms and getting nearly as close to each other as Cynthia and Inigo currently were, they headed into the room, the crowd they were entering remaining pretty silent until the other two had crossed the threshold of the room as well, after which everyone was erupting into cheers and calls of well-wishes.

It was done entirely for the attention, and even though she was in front of them Severa just knew that they were both eating up every second of it. She also knew that this was going to be photographed by everyone possible, which meant she needed to try looking happy even though she was unamused at best, so she forced herself to smile; that smile became genuine when, directly in front of them, she saw her father and Lunabel, the little girl waving at her while her father gave her a nod of approval.

After the requisite pictures were taken and the crowd went back to taking up seats at tables to give the wedding party some space, they were allowed to disperse amongst the crowd. This was the time for the newlyweds to go talk with everyone who’d been invited and been there for them, which meant that, until speeches were given and whatnot, there wasn’t really a task for Brady or Severa anymore. “I think we could do everyone a favor and watch Luna for a few minutes,” Brady whispered to Severa while she was looking around at the people still gathered. “I’m sure they’re all tired of passin’ her back and forth like they seem to have been.”

“You get her, I’ll stay right here and wait.” The spot she was standing in had a perfect view of the wedding cake if she wanted to spend the time staring at it, which made it the best possible place for her to do her crowd-watching. Most of the people were pretty obvious to still be there, all the parents and friends of parents, and there was a group gathered at one of the far tables that looked to all be people she’d seen in passing at work, people that came in with Inigo on days after events at the dance studio. As for any people there as Cynthia’s guests, there didn’t seem to be anyone present who fit that bill, although there were two older couples that she could guess were there in place of two of Cynthia’s friends.

That got Severa to thinking about where those friends might have been, and had she thought about possibly asking someone (maybe even anyone at the table those couples were gathered at), she might have gotten some kind of answer. Instead, she just kept on looking around until she was caught by surprise by a small hand cupping her cheek and a set of lips pressing itself against her nose, followed by the unmistakable laughter that only Lunabel was capable of. “What a pretty Mama,” the girl said, kissing her mother’s nose again. “So pretty!”

“Why thank you, miss Luna. You’re pretty yourself. Did your grandma have fun dressing you before you got here today?” The words that came from her mouth felt like they were betraying everything Severa typically stood for. Her daughter, being held by Brady as he nuzzled the back of her carefully-done pigtails, was wearing one of the gaudiest little dresses that Severa had ever seen in her life, so many ruffles and bows that it could have only been picked out by Maribelle. Lunabel didn’t seem to be bothered by it, telling her mom with pride that she _was_ pretty, before trying to rip one of the bows off her dress.

“Apparently she was doing that for the entire wedding, which Ma allowed only because she wasn’t trying to be loud with it,” Brady said as he watched Severa grab the girl’s wrist and pull her hand off the bow she was gripping. “At least, that’s what your dad told me when I grabbed Luna from him.”

“Wonder how that exchange went.” Severa couldn’t help but think of the absurdity of her criminal father interacting with Brady’s uptight and lawful mother outside of the court setting they most typically encountered one another in. She shook that thought from her head as she received another sloppy kiss, this time on her cheek rather than her nose. “Hey now Luna, don’t make my makeup run with all that slobber, please.”

“Mama, hold me?” Giving puppy-dog eyes that were impossible to resist, Lunabel was quickly shifted between her parents’ arms, only to want to switch back right away after being scolded about the kisses a second time. “Dada, Mama not like kisses! Mwah mwah!”

As she feigned kissing her father’s cheeks, as if trying to make her mother jealous, both parents shared a shrug between them, not really sure what the girl was trying to accomplish. “While we’ve got her, do ya wanna go try talking to anyone?” It was a suggestion that Brady was making only because he was seeing how often Severa was looking around, and when he got another shrug in return, he nodded. “Takin’ that one as a yeah, Sev. Come on, I bet we could find someone who’s wanting to talk with us.”

There actually wasn’t anyone who specifically wanted to talk to them outside of the ordinary, which was understandable given the circumstances of the day. At one point Laurent, roaming around with his old-fashioned instant print camera, stopped them and offered to take a picture for them to treasure the moment. “Everyone has been rather receptive of this offer,” he told them, already readying his camera even though they hadn’t given an answer, “because the uniqueness of being given a picture right away rather than having to wait for one months later is impossible to ignore.”

“You and Lucy take pictures of us all the time, though. Why do ya have to waste your time on us when there’s so many others to be takin’ pictures for?” While Brady was trying to raise a valid point, Lunabel was thinking about how much she loved posing for pictures and started screaming for one to be taken, because she was a “pretty girl” and needed to get a picture of it.

“She might be something to do with why he wastes his time on us,” Severa snarkily commented the moment after they’d gotten into position and the picture had been taken, the girl being way more enthusiastic than both her parents combined. It was so clear that Lunabel was the entire reason the offer had been made that, after the picture was printed, Laurent made sure to hand it to her with a reminder to treat it with care before he headed off to make his offer to someone else.

“Pretty Luna has a pretty pi’ture,” Lunabel proudly said, holding the picture in front of her with an extended arm, laughing as she looked at it.

Once again exchanging a shrug between them, Brady and Severa both looked at the picture as well, seeing nothing odd about it minus how unamused they both seemed to be in contrast from the huge, cheesy grin on their daughter’s face. “Whatever makes her laugh, I guess,” he said, nuzzling the back of her head again while she was still losing her mind over the picture in her hand. “Better than screamin’ and cryin’, right?”

“Maybe we’ll be able to use that picture to keep her from pitching a bitch fit when she can’t get a bunch of pieces of cake.” Pursing her lips together as she looked to where the cake stood, Severa could feel herself swoon a bit at the sight of the beautiful treat, but she had to stay strong and resist trying to get the cake-cutting underway, especially when she was talking about keeping her daughter from getting too many slices. “Or maybe we’ll just pass her back off to someone else and make it their problem.”

“That’s not really how parenting should go, but I think I get why you’re sayin’ it. Ya want some of that cake for yourself right now, don’t ya?” It wasn’t even surprising how easily Brady could read her mind, and no matter how hard she tried to deny the accusation she wouldn’t be able to do it to him. “Well it’s not time for that yet, now is it? You can be patient about it, Sev, just like the rest of us.”

She rolled her eyes, but agreed with him. “I know I can, it’s just hard. Come on, let’s just get somewhere I can’t see the damn thing so I’m not starving for it.”

On this attempt to find somewhere to go, they ended up at a table where two of the chairs were taken up by empty carseat carriers, the babies that belonged in them currently being held by two of the other people at the table. “Hiya, babies!” Lunabel happily chirped when she looked away from the picture to see the two babies. “What pretty girls!”

“Oh gods, Luna, you know this, one of them’s a boy,” Severa corrected, before doing a double-take and looking at the two babies for herself. “And they’re both wearing dresses? Noire! Didn’t we spend a few days trying to find a suit for the little guy?”

Hearing her name and how agitated Severa sounded as she said it, Noire looked up from the one of the twins she was holding and gave a small nod. “We did, but I couldn’t decide which dress to put Ophelia in, and since no one was there to stop me, I figured it would be okay if I put her in one and Odin in the other…I mean, they are basically the same, right?”

“And this is why one of us always gets called over to help you out, because you clearly can’t handle making decisions for two babies.” Severa’s statement was harsh, and it made Noire visibly wince to hear, but she was merely saying what she honestly thought about the matter. “No wonder you’re constantly mixing them up when they’ve got clothes on, you’re willing to dress them identically or close to it even though there’s no reason to.”

“I just thought…it wasn’t a bad idea when I had it!” Now adjusting how she was holding the baby in her arms, Noire actually lifted the child and pushed them towards Severa, her backing away at the gesture. “Look at him, doesn’t he just look happy to be dressed like his sister?” He actually looked like he was asleep, but Severa wasn’t going to say that, because she knew she was walking on very thin ice at the moment.

She ended up not saying anything because, in an attempt to make the situation de-escalate before it got any worse, Brady started walking away to find yet another place to go, and she followed him. “Don’t be picking fights with people like that, please Sev,” he begged once they were away from all the other guests. “I get that you’ve got strong feelings about how Noire’s parenting is goin’, but she’s sittin’ there with some people who were pretty decent parents themselves, I’m sure they’ve been givin’ her and Owain pointers when they need them. Hell, if Aunt Lissa hasn’t complained about both kids bein’ in dresses, I don’t think you needed to do it.”

“Something tells me that relying on your aunt’s judgment isn’t the best option,” Severa replied, smirking as she thought about how unique of a person Owain had ended up being. “But whatever, I’ll stop being so critical of Noire. As long as she stops calling me in the middle of the night begging me for help, anyway.”

Their attention was called from their conversation to the front of the room, where the bride and groom had taken position and were waiting for them to join them. That meant handing off Lunabel to the first one of her grandparents that they found (which happened to be Maribelle, as she seemed to be actively looking for the girl herself), and jumping right into the meat of the reception. More pictures were taken, speeches were given, dances were had, and that cake was finally cut into, giving everyone a bit of something to make being there worth it to them.

After the reception ended hours later, everyone slowly filing out of the ballroom as the hotel workers made quick work of cleaning up the area, people were giving the newlyweds well-wishes and final congratulations as they left. At the same time, Brady and Severa were giving their own goodbyes to their daughter as she went back to spend a second night with one set of grandparents, Lunabel not even caring that she was leaving her parents because of who she was going with. When they were done taking care of that, waving as their daughter left in Maribelle’s arms, they went back to wait around for Cynthia and Inigo to finish up with their duties before the rest of the night began.

“Did either of you know that it wasn’t going to just be you four here overnight?” Lucina asked as she came up behind Brady, wrapping an arm around him while she held her camera aloft in her other hand. “Not counting me or Laurent in that either, we were going to be here for photography purposes all night no matter how many people it was staying.”

“We didn’t know if it was going to actually work out or not, but yeah it was always supposed to be more than just the four of us,” Brady said in reply, turning his head to look at his sister from over his shoulder. “Are ya enjoying being hired on for the day as a photographer?”

She shrugged, nearly dropping her camera in the process. “It’s a bit of side money, do it all the time at the school when they need events documented. I’d much rather have just been here as a guest for my honorary little sister, but hey, I get to spend the day with her anyway so why wouldn’t I take up some money for it?”

“Oh cool, everyone’s already gathering here! So what’s the plan for the night, there’s got to be some crazy plan that’s led us to be actually staying here at this hotel on New Year’s Eve, huh?” Sounding just as excited as he normally did, Owain was dragging Noire by the hand over to the three people standing there in wait. She seemed to be focused on something back towards the hotel’s entrance, reaching out that way with her free hand, something he noticed and quickly explained to the others. “She’s just feeling a bit of regret for deciding to come to this rather than spending the evening with the babies. She’ll get over it when she sees how much fun we’re going to have, though.”

“Maybe it would be best if you let her make her own decision on this. Can’t believe she actually wants to do something with her kids for once.” Severa’s voice was low as she spoke, trying not to be heard, but both Brady and Lucina heard what she’d said, earning her one gasp and one stern headshake that was accompanied with some rolled eyes. “Hey now, I’m just making an observation on that one. She’s fine with ditching them when I’m helping watch them.”

“I never _ditch_ my babies! I just…it doesn’t sound fun to come out partying when I could be spending the night with them…” Sniffling, Noire closed her outstretched hand and retracted it, sighing as she did. “I’ll get over it. They’ll be well-cared for with their grandparents tonight, I’m sure of it.”

“That’s the spirit, Noire! My parents will handle everything tonight, and if anything goes wrong you know they’ll have it covered, so don’t stress at all about it!” Pulling her in close to him, Owain very loudly kissed her for a few seconds, before breaking away from her with a laugh. “See, tonight’s already going great, isn’t it?” Slowly blinking as she thought about how to answer, Noire’s chosen reply was to give him a small smile before giving him a kiss of her own, which led to the two of them kissing back and forth for several minutes, much to the disgust of the others standing there, as well as the next person to appear.

With a flash of his camera, Laurent went ahead and snapped a picture of the two being all over each other as soon as he saw it. “Might as well let them document this moment while they can,” he said as his camera printed the picture. “I might not be an advocate for this kind of behavior in such public places, but if they want a reminder of how hands-on they got in front of us all, I can give them that satisfaction.”

Since they didn’t seem to be fazed by him getting that picture, Severa felt it was safe to turn to Brady and tell him, “You know what, since Cynthia already defied expectations and got herself knocked up before tonight, I’m voting that they’re going to fill those shoes for her. Do you _see_ how they’re acting now that they’re not saddled with kids? They’re so going to make another one.”

“How about we just say no one’s going to be making any kids tonight?” he offered in response, while Lucina nodded in agreement with her brother’s words. “Seriously, Sev, it’s not going to happen, don’t get caught up on the physical possibility of it.” She sighed and inwardly hoped that he was wrong, while on the outside was making sure to verbally agree with his statement.

After the last wedding guest had left, Cynthia and Inigo joined the six people standing there waiting for them, their arms interlocked as they approached. “Before we get to the events of the evening for us younger folks, we need to make sure to check out the rooms we’ve been gifted for the night by my parents,” Inigo said, earning a couple jaw-drops from the people he was talking to while he brandished four hotel room keys. “Behind our backs, they went and arranged this for us, as they knew we were going to be spending the evening and early morning hours tomorrow hanging around here to celebrate. Shall we go check the rooms out now, or later?”

“I vote now, I’d love to finally get out of this dress,” Cynthia answered, looking down at herself and her still-pristine gown (aside from one bright blue frosting smudge right along the neckline). “And don’t worry, _my_ parents worked to make sure that all of us have some kind of change of clothes for the evening. It was a lot of being a sneaky-sneak to get what size things everyone wears, but they might’ve bought some things for all of us…” That revelation brought jaws a bit closer to the ground, which only made the couple laugh at how well these “gifts” were going over with the group.

The rooms they were given were on close to the top floor, having a beautiful view of the city from the windows as each couple went into their own room to find a wrapped package on the bed for them, which contained the gifted clothing that Cynthia had talked about. “I can’t believe their parents actually hooked us all up like this, I thought this was going to be a night of us having fun and getting drunk here at the hotel’s lounge to celebrate their wedding and the New Year, and then the people who didn’t drink would drive those of us who did home,” Severa said as she looked at the honestly adorable outfit that she’d been given, while Brady was already putting his own. “I’m so going to have to thank her parents when I get the chance, this shit’s name brand and everything.”

“They want to treat their daughter’s friends well, looks like, and that’s okay with me.” Speaking as he had his head halfway in his new shirt, Brady laughed when he got it over his head and saw Severa staring at him, her eyes running up and down his body. “H-hey now, what’s that look for?”

“Always forget how attractive you are until I see you shirtless,” she replied, before beginning to take her dress off and hoping for some kind of similar reaction from him when she would be standing there in next to nothing. The reaction she got was him looking away, face turning bright red at how flustered she was making him by not just her appearance but how she’d been flattering him.

By the time they’d both changed and were out in the hall waiting for everyone else to finish up, they’d moved past their little moment, although it stayed in the back of their minds for the entire night. That night was filled with a lot of drinking from half of the people there, while the other half did a lot of talking and sober celebrating. It was obvious why Cynthia wasn’t drinking to those who knew her situation, and Noire never drank because she didn’t like what alcohol managed to do to her state of mind; Lucina and Laurent both took a couple sips of someone’s drink when midnight happened but that was the extent of their drinking, choosing to stay sober to get all the best pictures.

The other four, however, were taking advantage of the situation for as long as they could. The very moment that Inigo had pointed out that his parents had also vowed to cover any tab they accrued at the hotel’s bar that night, it became a game of trying as many different drinks as possible for them, not needing to worry about paying for what they ended up not liking. As time ticked further and further past midnight and the piles of empty cups at their table stacked higher, the four were clearly much more intoxicated than they needed to be, but with it being a holiday and them being there to celebrate a wedding there was no stopping them from over-drinking.

Not until the bartenders cut them off and refused to serve them, anyway, but by then they were far too drunk to really care if what they were drinking was alcoholic or not. After that point, it became a game of how long it would take for them to get bored with being in the bar and want to go up to their rooms, something that the sober folks were making playful bets on. None of them would have guessed that, after the people running the lounge turned the floor over to a karaoke-type setting, they’d be down there for several more hours listening to slurred and drunken renditions of songs that were only suggested as challenges, but it was what happened.

Somewhere around four in the morning, the people still running the lounge started trying to close up, having to put an end to the fun due to needing to stop operations for the night. That meant one loud, long elevator ride up to their floor (loud only because a couple of the drunks wouldn’t stop badly singing, and the other two were yelling at them to shut up the entire time), followed by everyone heading into their respective rooms for the night to try and sleep at least a little bit.

No sooner had the door to their room latched was Severa stripping herself of her clothing, her alcohol-muddled mind telling her that now that she was safely in her room, it was acceptable to do that. “W-whoa there, Sev, you’re gonna…eh, I don’t think anyone’s gonna open that door on us,” Brady said with a shrug, not bothering to take off his own clothing as he fell onto the bed, Severa jumping on top of him the moment she was completely undressed. “What are ya doin’, getting on me like this? You’re really warm…”

“I am,” she replied, her voice as close to a purr as she could manage to make it, as she pressed her burning cheek up against his, running a finger along the other side of his face, “and I want you to make me warmer.”

“Make you warmer? I mean, blankets are a thing, Sev.” Due to him being the least drunk of the four who’d been blazing through drinks, there was at least a small capability of rational thinking that Brady had, and he was making good use of it. “Just get dressed and get under the blanket, and you’ll be warmer.”

Her hand was off his face and was beginning to track down his body, swirling along wherever she felt necessary. “I don’t want blankets, though. I want your body heat all over me.” He could feel his breath catching as he thought through what she was saying, but before he could try to rationalize it, she came right out and told him exactly what she was referring to, in the bluntest and almost begging way she could possibly do it. “I want you to raw me, Brady. Right now.”

He might have been thinking slightly rationally, but when his completely nude wife was on top of him begging him to have sex with her right there, he wasn’t going to dwell on that thought any longer than necessary. He was going to give her what she wanted, right then and right there, just to make her happy. And when morning came to them both being hungover and naked in bed together, those killer headaches they had were honestly the least of their worries.


	3. Karma's Precise Strike

Like so many mornings before, Brady woke up expecting to see Severa’s still-sleeping face sharing the pillow with him, only to find that the blankets on her side of the bed were tossed to the side and she was gone. “Uh, where’d ya get off to already, Sev?” he tiredly asked, sitting up and looking around the room for her, even though there was no way she was still in there, with how quiet it was. “Interesting, normally ya at least wake me up before you go off to do somethin’ this early…”

He got out of bed and threw on his work clothes, knowing that he didn’t have time to indulge in this game of hide-and-seek with her because he had somewhere he needed to be. Once he was dressed, he opened the bedroom door and saw Lunabel laying on the floor in front of the bathroom, her legs propped against the door. “Hiya Dada,” she chirped, waving at him. “Time for icky work?”

“That’s right, it’s about that time.” His eyes narrowing as he looked at the girl, taking note of how she was already dressed for the day despite that normally being a thing he did before he left, his attention was drawn away from her when he heard what sounded like pained groaning on the other side of the bathroom door. “Luna, is your mom in there?”

Nodding, the girl kicked the door with one of her feet. “Yeah! Mama is!” she replied, kicking with the other foot before she giggled and started trying to make music with her kicks, something that was stopped when the door came flying open and a completely disheveled and sickly-looking Severa was standing there in its wake, her face pale as she first glared down at her still-giggling daughter before looking up at Brady blankly staring back at her.

“Don’t even think about worrying about me right now,” she snapped, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand before groaning again. “I’m seriously fine, just must’ve had something to eat yesterday that my body didn’t agree with. Go to work, don’t think about what you’re seeing here, just get lost.”

He didn’t consider fighting back against her demands, the sight of her looking unwell making him not want to argue with her even a little bit. Forgoing the normal morning routine of farewell kisses, he went to pick Lunabel up off the ground to take her with him, but Severa repeated her last three words before he got the chance, meaning that for the first time in a long time, he was leaving the house for work in the morning by himself.

Of course, if he was _actually_ going to work right then, that would be some kind of accomplishment. “Can’t believe I don’t have the excuse to go sit and chat with Sev’s dad for a little bit today,” he grumbled to himself as he walked out to the parking lot at the apartment complex, giving the car a quick look before patting down his pocket and realizing he’d left the keys back on the kitchen counter. “Damn it, at least walkin’ means I can kill time some way after all.”

It had been a long time since he’d actually walked himself to work, due to always being the one to take Lunabel to some relative’s house in the morning, and walking anywhere with her wasn’t much of an option. Thanks to it being a rather mild winter morning, he wasn’t freezing as he stayed outside, taking his time as he walked down the street with very few cars passing him. “Wonder if I’ll actually be workin’ at all today,” he mused, looking at his hands and how relatively clean they seemed to be, compared to when he’d be dealing with oily car parts on the regular. “Also wonder how long I’ll be able to keep this whole charade up before Sev finds out I haven’t really been working.” He stopped mid-stride, bringing his feet together to stand as he looked up to the clear blue sky overhead. “Gotta be thankful her dad’s been funneling some money to us to help out, but it’s only going to last so long.”

When he resumed walking, he could feel a heaviness in his chest that he didn’t want to address, something that he’d been ignoring for so long: how had it gotten to the point where they were relying on other people’s money, after close to three years of being completely self-reliant? That was actually a question that didn’t need answering, he knew exactly how it had gotten to this point, but he didn’t want to admit to himself that it was time to start the process of looking for a new job.

By the time he got to the car shop he’d been so-called employed at, he was completely winded from the long walk he’d had to take to get there, but judging by how, like normal, business seemed to be pretty slow, he didn’t expect to really be working at all. Slipping inside through the open door to the garage, Brady gave a quick wave over at Owain as he watched his cousin fiddling with some kind of car part, his cousin grumbling about how he didn’t like how the greasy metal felt under his fingers while he worked. “I bet I could do it in half the time you could,” he remarked as he stopped waving, hoping that he wasn’t heard.

“It’s about time you decided t’show up,” he heard his uncle say from the doorway to the office, where he looked to see Vaike standing, that normal grin on his face. “Got some bad news t’pass along t’ya, but I’m sure you’re able t’guess what it is without me havin’ t’say it out loud, aren’t you?”

Swallowing down all his thoughts on the matter, Brady merely nodded in response, trying not to make eye contact with his uncle as he awaited the words he’d been dreading. Except, as the pause between announcement and reveal dragged on, he found himself needing to actually look at the older man to try and speed up the process. Still, when nothing was said, he sighed and asked, “You’re going ahead and firing me because there’s not enough hours and business for me and Owain both to be workin’, aren’t you?”

“What? Why’s that your guess for what’s goin’ on?” Laughing, Vaike reached out and grabbed Brady’s shoulder, shaking it for a moment while he collected himself, Brady looking very confused at the gesture. “No, we’re gonna find a way t’make both of ya stayin’ on the team work out, even if it means cuttin’ hours and days. He’s okay with only workin’ five a week, if you’re cool with workin’ the other one, and—“

“ _One_ day a week?” Making sure that he’d heard the proposition correctly, Brady couldn’t help but feel completely appalled at the reality of everything. At least if he’d been cut completely, he could go find another job with no guilt on his shoulders, but to still have a job one day a week meant that he’d be ruining some plan of his uncle’s if he left the shop. So when he got a grunt in response, indicating that he had indeed heard it right, his heart sank down into his stomach. “I, uh, I don’t know if that’s really the best choice for me. Can’t we keep up this ‘come in and work if you’re needed’ thing we’ve been doin’?”

“Because havin’ both of ya work at once is killin’ all the profits we could be makin’, so there needs t’be some sacrifice made.” Pulling back to resume standing in the office’s doorway, Vaike looked over to where Owain was still fighting with that same part he had been before. “Your kid’s old enough now that ya don’t need all the money for everything like he does right now. Lissa and I talked about it, and while we know it’s lookin’ a lot like favoritism if we pick t’help him more than you, it’s just that he’s our kid and those kids are our grandbabies and we…we’ve gotta help them however we can.”

“I…understand, thanks,” Brady managed to say, before bringing a hand to his head and running it over his eyes. “Now I’ve gotta explain to Sev about how she’s gonna be the one paying for everything because my pay here’s not going to help at all, but it’s all for those kids, right? Can’t complain when it’s for them.”

He must have sounded spiteful as he spoke, because the look he was getting from his uncle due to that reaction was one of pure shock. “Y’mean that you’re not okay with just doin’ one full day here? The hours’ll be a little less than what you’ve been workin’ lately, but it’s one day a week, which means six with that girl of yours. That’s better than you’ll find anywhere else, y’know.”

“But it’s not enough and you know it, Uncle Vaike. I can’t be supportin’ Sev and Luna with only working one day a week.” Dragging his hand down off his face, Brady turned around, his back facing his uncle, while he watched his cousin still struggle with that single part. “I know why you’re picking him over me, and I don’t blame ya for it, but…seriously? He doesn’t work very well at all. Never has.”

“Can you imagine what his mother would say t’me if I chose t’drop him down from all these days to just one? She’d have my head for it, even if you’re twice the worker he’s ever been.” Sighing, Vaike stepped forward to place both his hands on the back of Brady’s shoulders, digging his thumbs into the upper part of his back for a moment before the younger man shook his head and started walking elsewhere in the building. “Now come back here right now, ol’ Vaike wasn’t done talkin’ with ya yet!”

Brady didn’t stop walking for a moment, finding himself the first clean chair in the garage and collapsing into it. “If you want to talk, talk with me while I’m sittin’ down, I had to walk over here from home today and I’m tired.” When he wasn’t followed at all, he assumed the conversation was done and that he could just relax there for a while until he decided what else to do, but when he looked back in his uncle’s direction and saw the disappointment in the man’s face, he knew there was trouble. “Er, I didn’t do anythin’ wrong by choosing to sit rather than keep talking, did I?”

“No, don’t suppose y’did, but…” Scratching the back of his neck as he formulated what he needed to say, Vaike glanced towards the opened door to the garage before motioning his head in that direction. “Maybe it’d be best if ya found somewhere else to hang around today. Not sayin’ that your company’s bad or anythin’, but if Lissa happens t’stop by and sees ya here, she’s gonna get on me for throwin’ money at you even though you ain’t workin’ and I’d just rather not deal with that mess today.”

“I’ll, uh, find somewhere else then, yeah, that’s fine,” Brady said, standing back up and feeling the muscles in his legs aching from how little rest they’d just gotten. “I’m sure there’s somewhere else I could hang to make it seem like I was here all day, so Sev isn’t getting suspicious about what’s happening.”

“Sorry that we’re havin’ to have this happen like this, but it’s for the best. I’ll call ya next time I need ya t’come in, no worries.” Grinning once more as Brady’s footsteps echoed through the garage, this time it was Vaike doing the waving as he left. “Good luck out there, kid! I’ll miss havin’ ya around all the time!”

“Oh cool, I got it apart!” Now holding two distinct parts in his hands, Owain looked up from his work to see his father waving at no one in particular, his eyebrows furrowing as he tried to figure out what had just happened. “Did I miss someone come in while I was getting these pieces unstuck?”

The last thing Brady heard before he left the property was his uncle telling Owain that no, no one at all had come in. Hearing that made him sigh, hanging his head for a moment before the realization that he had several hours to kill before he could even consider going home struck him. “Where do I even go around here?” he asked himself, looking up and down the street for some direction to go in. “I mean, Inigo’s flowershop’s only a few blocks from here but he’d tell Cynthia I’m off, and Cynthia’ll tell Sev, and Sev’ll have my neck for it.”

Looking in the direction opposite the big buildings that made up the shopping district of town, Brady found himself staring down a street he knew all too well, having come down it many times growing up as he’d been brought to the car shop. “Wonder if Ma’s off today, maybe she’d take pity on me and let me in for lunch or somethin’. Don’t have to worry about her tellin’ Sev anything, so that would be a plus, but…” He groaned, hanging his head again. “This’d be so much easier if I wasn’t havin’ to play hooky from work. I’ll just head downtown and see if anythin’ catches my fancy on the way.”

He ended up at the library, as it was right along the route he was taking to get into the heart of town, and while there he found himself sitting in a chair near the children’s section of books, some gaming magazine on his lap that he’d picked to leaf through to pass the time. Watching the young children browsing through the shelves with their parents ended up being enough of a time waster, though, because every time he decided he was going to try and read up on some of the new gaming tech he’d been missing out on (because being a good parent was always more important than gaming), he’d be distracted by a new child entering the area. The way the kids were so eager to look through all the books for ones with their favorite characters or animals on them was endearing to him, and it made him wish he had Lunabel with him so that he could let her pick out a book for them to read together.

If he had any logical reason to have been at the library to begin with, he might have looked through the shelves himself to find something Lunabel might have liked, but he didn’t need to raise Severa’s suspicion level any more than normal. After a mother with several children ranging from toddler to young-school age left the section, he got out of the chair, leaving the magazine on the armrest in case he came back to it, before walking up to the first shelf and crouching down to get at a better level to the books. They were organized by reading level, and the ones he was staring at were all board books meant for the youngest of kids—a bit too young of an audience to be what Lunabel would want, but he wasn’t actually looking for her so he could take the time to look through them.

The first books he saw were some of the textured ones, which he cringed to actually see there, because this was a library. Those books must have been either sanitized a million times or some of the nastiest things in existence, so he was going to keep away from them. Next were ones about families and how parents loved their kids no matter what, which were nice to see, even though the covers of all those books had badly-drawn families to make their points with. He couldn’t even imagine taking something like that home and expecting Severa to allow it anywhere near Lunabel, no matter what. “Where’s the ones showin’ colors and stuff like that?” he asked, after glancing towards the animal identification books. “Don’t kids need to know their colors?”

He was half-tempted to flag someone who worked there down to help him out, all in the name of future knowledge if he ever brought Lunabel over and she wanted to try reading something for herself, but his phone started buzzing in his pocket. “Odd, everyone knows I’m supposed to be at work right now, which means no phone checks, but…” Standing back up, he reached into his pocket and saw that it was Severa texting him something, a message that started with “for when you get a moment”. He inhaled sharply at the words, not sure what could follow them and not sure if he could check the message then or if needed to find somewhere a bit more private.

Looking at the time on his phone, he noticed that it was just about lunchtime, which gave him an idea. What if he went home and told her that he’d been told to take an early day after a lunch break? She’d have no reason to accept that answer, because that was how erratic his schedule had been at several points during his time working at the shop, so it was a good plan. He could always look at the message (and the couple others following it that kept setting his phone off) while he walked, as long as no one ended up trailing behind him where they could see his screen.

The weather outside had gotten a little colder in the hour or so he’d been in the library, but it still wasn’t much of a bother to him to be walking in. That couldn’t be said for other people, judging by how he seemed to be the only person out on the sidewalk as he started heading for home, a perfect situation to be in right then. Opening that first message up to read the rest of the contents, he found himself wishing that he’d chosen to do this somewhere he could sit down to process what he was about to see, because when, following “moment”, it read, “there’s a /pretty big/ chance we fucked up sweetheart”, he knew that everything he’d received there in the library was nothing but trouble.

“Shouldn’t have let her talk me out of worryin’ about her this morning,” he said as he opened the first photo message she’d sent, nearly dropping his phone when he saw that it was taken at the closest corner store to their apartment, showing the limited selection they liked to refer to as the “family planning” section, with Lunabel’s head visible in the bottom corner, her small hand reaching for some kind of candy. That message, captioned, “guess we’ll have to see for ourselves, huh?” was followed in succession with one from back inside the bathroom in their apartment, holding up a couple of the boxes she’d clearly bought there at the store with the caption of “ready to double check myself, hoping we’re in the clear here”.

That one had been followed right away with a lone message, unaccompanied by a picture, that said, “if I’m really pregnant again, you’re dead to me xoxo,” which was a lot more worrisome than it needed to be. Brady knew that Severa wouldn’t really consider him dead to her for anything, even something as inopportune as her possibly being pregnant, but it was still concerning that this was even something that could be happening to them.

The lack of follow-up to that last message worried him more than anything, though, because why wasn’t she telling him anything else? There were only two ways this could go, and he was sure she would want to tell him either of the outcomes the first chance she got, so why was she stalling? Certainly she would be quick to either send him that it was a false alarm, or the profanity-laced message that it wasn’t, and that they were on the road to being—oh _gods_ he knew why she wasn’t sending him anything.

She’d want to see the reaction either way, face-to-face, him there to hear her tell him the news. She’d want to be able to watch him either sigh in relief or begin crying in fear of what this all meant, and judging by how he was already tearing up at the mere prospect of having to deal with her being pregnant all over again, that second option was not going to be a pretty one if that’s what it came to. How he hoped this was just her overreacting and it wasn’t the start of something they’d sworn never to do again.

The looming dread of what was to come kept him from hurrying home too fast, wanting to hold off on the inevitable as long as possible. But he couldn’t take forever getting home, as his worrying was already starting to eat at his insides, and no amount of fear of what he was arriving home to could get him to convince himself that he wasn’t scared of what could be happening to them.

When he got up to the front door of the apartment, he found it solidly locked, and as he’d left his keys inside when he went to “work” that morning, he was resigned to having to knock on the door for someone to let him in. “Ooh, Dada’s back!” he heard Lunabel say, her hands banging on the other side of the door as she tried to unlock it to let him in, but she was only able to get one of the two locks undone. “Mama, let Dada in!”

The other lock was audibly unlatched, the doorknob turning without Brady actually having to touch it, and the door came swinging open, Severa holding it open for him to step inside. She waited until he was in and looking at her with anxious eyes before she closed it, off-handedly waving towards the bathroom once she had the chance. “I know why you’re here so early, they’re in there if you want to see for yourself.”

“Figured takin’ a half day today so I could get back for this was pretty important,” he lied, feeling that yes being there for her was important, but he certainly hadn’t done anything regarding work to get to be there. “I’m so sorry you had to do this today, but judging by how you’re not trying to kill me or actively ignore me right now, I’m assuming that this is going to be a good reveal.”

“Go see for yourself, I’m not making that judgment for you.” Something about how she seemed to be spitting her words as she spoke was giving him a bad vibe, but she moved on before he had a chance to question what she meant. Lunabel was grabbing her hand, asking her to do something for her, acting as a distraction so that Brady could go see this for himself without any intervention.

All those boxes from the picture were sitting empty on the counter, their contents laying in front of them. “Wow, ya really made sure to double and triple check on this one, didn’t ya?” he asked as he read the boxes, making a note of how the different brands worked so that he knew what he was looking for. “Let’s hope it’s all for nothing, huh? I don’t think I could survive seeing ya go through that a second time…” Even though he knew the evidence he needed for either option was right there in front of him, he had to avert his eyes from the counter for a moment to collect himself and his thoughts. This was possibly going to be the second big life-changing moment they’d had like this, and he didn’t want to start blubbering the moment he saw the results, no matter which way they swung.

“You didn’t think I wasn’t going to _watch_ this, did you?” Severa’s voice in the doorway made him jump back, nearly crashing into the wall behind him. His whole body shaking in fear as he turned to look at her smirk as she slowly let her gaze fall onto what was on the counter, her face going stone serious as she looked. “Besides, knowing you, you’re going to need me to explain it to you anyway, even with me leaving out the instructions.”

“Come on, I’m not nearly that stupid.” After taking a couple deep breaths to calm himself down from the scare she’d given him, Brady approached the counter once more, seeing Severa lean against the doorframe out of the corner of his eye as she watched what he was doing. His first thought was to lean down to see, but she tutted as he started bending down, the noise stopping once he was standing straight and reaching for the first device with a trembling hand.

“Oh good gods you’re taking forever at this,” she interrupted, pushing him out of the way to grab exactly what he’d been reaching for and shoving it in his face, which made it impossible for him to not look at it and see the two parallel lines running on its test box. “Look at them, look at what you’ve _done_.” Throwing that one at him, it bouncing off his shirt and hitting the ground, she picked up the second and let him see it the same way, its indicator also giving a “positive” reading.

She had already thrown that one and was reaching for the third when he grabbed her wrist and pulled her into him, her anger-filled eyes locking with his teary ones. “You do not need to show me anything else to prove your point,” he sternly said, his voice cracking as he spoke, “because I get it. Told ya I’m not stupid, then you went and treated me like I am.”

“You’re a complete idiot, Brady, and I hate you for that.” Trying to jerk her arm out of his grasp, Severa found that he was holding onto her tighter than she figured he would, meaning she wasn’t getting away from him until they talked their problem out. “I hate you for being my husband and for being so dumb and so attractive and for actually loving me and for…” Her voice was starting to crack as well, until she reached a point where her mind couldn’t formulate the hateful words she was trying to push out. “…I hate you for what you’ve done to me. Again.”

Like it was perfectly timed, Lunabel could be heard out in the living room, loudly singing a song to herself before abruptly changing her mind mid-lyric to say, “Mama said only one candy. A bag is candy,” only to go right back to singing.

“I’d like to think we lucked out on the first one,” Brady remarked, while Severa’s face had gone completely colorless and she was trying to pull away from him even harder than before. “She’s a good kid, and I’m sure that, uh, ya know, this next one will be too?” Watching as she struggled, he had lost his steam in his statement, ending up with some wishful thought than a positive reminder like he’d hoped. The reason for her struggle, however, was completely lost on him until he finally let her go after a few minutes of actually starting to talk about their situation. When she bolted to go stop Lunabel from whatever she was doing, he followed, just to find the little girl, covered in various candy pieces with several half-empty bags of sweets laying on the floor around her, sitting in what looked like a sugar coma.

Before he could even ask what had happened, he got his answer through Severa shaking the girl back awake, yelling at her as she did. “I told you one candy, that meant one piece from one bag, not all the candy from all the bags!” As the girl came back around, looking sickly from what she’d done, she was still getting an earful from her mother. “I should’ve left you here when I went to the store, it would have made leaving so much easier! You only got all that candy because you were told one piece at a time, not all at once!”

“Maybe she’s not as good as I thought.” Scratching the side of his head as he counted the bags on the floor, finding at least a dozen within sight, he sighed at the realization that a second child would result in more incidents like this one. But as he watched Severa, still berating Lunabel for what she’d done, reaching for the candy herself, he was reminded that even before he’d have to face this situation with another kid involved, he’d have to deal with the next many months of Severa being just as bad, if not worse, when it came to sweets.

He let his head fall back as he groaned at what this was shaping up to become. Between barely having a job anymore, having a child to raise, and having a pregnant wife to have to appease all the time, it didn’t look like things were going to be easy for him at all. But, at least, he was pretty sure they couldn’t get too much worse.

* * *

The plan had been to try and keep the news under wraps for a little while, to be able to have some great reveal that would take everyone’s minds off the fact that maybe them having a second child wasn’t the best idea, but that plan got thrown right out the window a couple of days later, at a family gathering celebrating Severa’s birthday. It started innocently, with her parents wanting to shower her with some kind of affection for one day of the year, but the moment her mother broke out a bottle of wine, explaining that it was the same age as Severa was and that it would be a fun experience to taste it and see how it had aged over the past twenty-five years.

She took one look at the bottle, it decorated with a bow to show that it was indeed a birthday gift, and cringed at what she knew she had to do. “Mom, listen, it’s a great idea, it really is, but I’m not much of a wine drinker, so…” Forcing a smile as she looked at her mother, Severa could see in her eyes that she knew something was amiss, but when Cordelia chose not to comment on something, she was doing it to avoid any kind of conflict with the child she had such a strained relationship with. “Maybe you and Dad and Brady can all share the bottle, but I think I’ll pass.”

“I have never known you to toss aside an opportunity to drink,” Cordelia said with a sigh, ripping the bow off the bottle before setting it down on the table everyone was gathered around. “Even before you legally could, you were always attempting to get into people’s alcohol just to say you did it.”

Shrugging, Severa gave the first reply that she thought of, not realizing how dumb it was to keep lying to her mother until after the words had left her mouth. “Yeah, well, I’ve grown up and changed. Gotten a taste for what drinks I like and which ones I don’t, and right now I’m just not feeling that wine.”

“This is the same kind of wine we’ve had at every birthday celebration in the past few years, Severa, just a different and older brand.” Narrowing her eyes at her daughter for a moment, Cordelia’s gaze drifted over to where her husband was sitting, watching the man’s focus on the bottle she’d set down. “Gaius! Are you listening to this? She’s insisting that she doesn’t enjoy your favorite sweet wine. What kind of daughter did we end up raising?”

The word “sweet” sent a chill down Severa’s spine, her jaw trembling a bit as she thought about what she was having to refuse. She caught her father’s eye as he went from staring at the bottle to looking up at Cordelia with raised eyebrows, quickly looking away from him so she didn’t watch as he gave his response. “Seeing as I wasn’t around for most of the raising thing, I’d say you should be asking yourself that question and not directing it at me. I didn’t do a single thing wrong here.”

Rolling her eyes, Cordelia reached for the bottle again, pushing it towards Gaius so he could grab it and uncork it like he wanted to. “Yes, well, I’m not the one who enjoys drinking that stuff at every chance I’m given, I only do it to indulge you and—until right this moment, apparently—Severa.” Hearing her name said the way it was had Severa’s head perking up, her attention turning to her mother, but the speediness of how she moved made her incredibly dizzy, her eyes fluttering a bit as she tried keeping herself from getting sick off her dizziness. If she hadn’t been sitting right next to her mother when it happened, she might have been able to move past it without issue, but Cordelia happened to see the end result and, because of it, pulled her lips tightly together in silence.

“Er, Sev, you feelin’ okay right now?” Brady quietly asked, reaching to put a hand on her knee while she worked to keep herself from feeling so dizzy. “I don’t like seeing ya acting like this, and it’s kind of worryin’ me…”

“I’m perfectly fine, I don’t know what you’re asking about,” she replied, brushing his hand off of her as to lower any suspicion. “I just moved a bit too fast and had to take a moment, that’s all. Nothing to worry about here.”

It was too late to keep Cordelia from jumping to conclusions, though, and Severa knew it, especially when she felt her chair get forcibly turned by her mother, so that they were facing each other a bit better. “Refusing your favorite wine on your birthday, getting sickly just by moving a slight bit, if you’re trying to keep something from us you’re doing a rather horrendous job of it.” Holding her hand out in front of her daughter, Cordelia waited until Severa reluctantly gave her one of her own before she said anything else, her first words timed perfectly with how she started gently squeezing the hand she now held. “Sweetheart, you don’t have to beat around the bush with us here. Are you expecting to be given money or aid from us again?”

“W-what? Of course not!” Taken by surprise at the question (although if the two ladies weren’t so focused on each other they might have seen the odd look shared between Gaius and Brady at the mention of money), Severa pulled her hand out of her mother’s and brought her whole arm to rest protectively in front of her, before opening her mouth and revealing exactly what she’d been trying not to. “We got through the whole pregnancy thing last time without you helping us much in the end, we so can do it this time by ourselves.”

“I…hm, wasn’t expecting you to be so open about things this time around.” Cordelia’s eyes were watching how her daughter’s arm had been positioned, unable to pull herself to look anywhere else, while Severa was going slack-jawed at what she’d just said and the uninspired reaction to it. “At least I found out this time from you yourself and not from your father telling me.” When she finally looked up to her daughter’s reddening face, her eyes were beginning to brim with tears. “Darling, this is such great news to hear from you! You’re going to have to tell me everything you know at this point, it doesn’t seem like it could be much judging by how you’re still so small, but I need all the information you have!”

In the chair on the other side of Severa’s, Brady was leaning forward to rest his head on the edge of the table, sighing as he made himself comfortable there. “This wasn’t what we were supposed to do while here today, Sev,” he grumbled. “We were supposed to make it through today without someone finding out. Now that your folks know, mine’ll know in no time, and that’s just…not what we wanted.”

“Cheer up, bud,” Gaius said, also leaning down so that he could speak to Brady in whispers without being caught. “If anything, this makes me helping you out loads easier. Can’t imagine Cordelia getting too upset if she finds out I’m passing you two money so you can raise our other grandbaby just as well as you raised Luna.”

“Luna, ‘s me!” the little girl squealed, sitting across from the two men and completely unaware that she shouldn’t have been trying to listen to what they were saying. “Luna a big, big, _big_ girl!” Her arms were spreading wide to show just how big she meant, and while she was doing that she realized that none of the attention in the room was on her, causing her to puff her cheeks out and start screaming loudly until someone looked.

All four people it could have possibly been looked at once, the mother-daughter pair being interrupted from their one-sided conversation due to the screaming while the two men had to sit back up to not seem suspicious. “Gods, how’s Luna taking this news?” Cordelia asked, being the one to actually grab the girl and take hold of her to get her to stop screaming. “I’m sure she’s over the moon to know that she’s—“

“We _aren’t_ telling her yet,” Severa cut off, miming zipping her lips to get her mother to not get offended at not being allowed to finish her thought. “We’ll have to come up with a good way to do it, but while she’s throwing a spoiled little girl fit at what should be my birthday lunch isn’t how it’s going to be.” The girl didn’t appreciate being referred to in such a way, as evidenced by how she loudly told her grandmother that she was a good kid, which in turn led to Severa dropping all sense of being a mature adult to stick her tongue out at the girl, exposing the metal bauble she still wore despite supposedly being that mature adult.

That led to a round of laughter started by Lunabel herself, finding her mother’s behavior impossible to not laugh at. It was a good way to move past the sudden revelation of an unexpected and unpredicted pregnancy, even though that topic was far from done with. Throughout the lunch, it was vaguely mentioned and discussed, but very little was actually said; it wasn’t until the coming months where it was actually talked about in more depth.

Barely a month later, at the large birthday party that was thrown for Lunabel, a much larger discussion of the news took place, after Cordelia innocently asked Maribelle what her thoughts on the matter were. As Maribelle hadn’t been told at that point, due to Brady’s reluctance to get his mother involved, a lot of yelling happened, combined with the utter disbelief that something so important was going on without her knowing, but once she was clued in to the fact that Severa was just over eight weeks pregnant and hadn’t been intentionally telling anyone, she was lot less offended at being left out.

It still resulted in an hour-long discussion about everything they knew about the baby at that point, which detracted from the whole party thing for Lunabel, who was not taking being neglected very well. The other party goers, torn between getting involved with whatever conversation Maribelle was passionately having and getting involved with making sure that the birthday girl wasn’t having a total meltdown, ultimately didn’t have as much fun as they could that day, but really, it was a little girl’s third birthday party, how much fun were they really going to have?

If there was one positive from the day, it was how Cynthia, knowing exactly what her best friend was getting grilled about, finally found a way to casually drop the news to everyone that she too was pregnant, using the exact same timeframe that Severa was as her base for her revelation. The one issue with it was, of course, that she was at least a month further along, but as she wasn’t showing that didn’t seem to be that much of an issue at all.

One week later, though, and it would have been near impossible to believe that Cynthia was the one that was more pregnant between the two of them. “Gods, Severa, did you like eat all the leftover cake from Luna’s birthday party?” she teasingly asked when they both showed up for work one morning, poking her in the side before getting her hand smacked away. “Sheesh, I’m just asking a question, no need to get mad like that.”

“I was hoping no one would notice,” Severa said, looking down at herself and pulling at her shirt over her stomach, feeling it being more constricting than normal. “I mean, I did eat most of that cake, but…I didn’t think it would, you know, matter right now. I shouldn’t already be getting fat again.”

“You just admitted to eating most of a _huge_ cake, I don’t know why you’re acting like you didn’t see this coming.” Cynthia laughed for a moment, until she saw Severa glaring at her with dagger eyes, then she swallowed down the last of her giggles and grinned at her friend. “Okay, I’ll stop making a big deal of this. I’ll just be happy that you’re already showing and I’m not, which makes hiding the fact that I’ve been pregnant longer than you so much easier than it should be.”

The glare softened, as Severa’s eyes tracked down to her friend’s stomach, finding it impossible to see anything different about her through her work clothes. She opened her mouth to say something, but all that came out was a breathy “what?” that was barely audible to herself, let alone Cynthia. She stared in disbelief for a moment, tugging at her own shirt again as she tried to understand that she was, despite once making fun of the impossibility of this, acting as her friend’s perfect cover for her mistake.

That only became more obvious over time, as every shift they worked together they would inevitably spend at least a few moments comparing themselves, much to Severa’s complete dismay. She hated how she felt every time she’d see Cynthia come up to her, pulling her baggy shirt back to expose whatever tiny little stomach she had gotten by that point, because that meant that she had to do the same for the sake of the comparison. After the first couple of weeks, it was honestly unnecessary for her to pull any excess shirt fabric out of the way because of how tight her top had quickly gotten; by the time they’d been doing this for a month she was struggling to even keep her shirt tucked in while she worked, making it easy to make the visual comparisons.

“Whatever baby you’ve got growing in there, I’m sure they’re super comfy with all the room you’re giving them,” Cynthia said after they’d finished up comparing themselves one afternoon at the start of their shift, beaming because it was the first time she’d come into work with her stomach pressing against her shirt on its own and she was so excited to show off that development. “The doctor yesterday, she said that my baby’s got enough room too, even though I’m not nearly as big as you are.”

“Can you please stop using me as your springboard for everything?” Irritated not just at her friend but at how she could feel the front of her shirt slowly creeping up out from where she’d tucked it, Severa rolled her eyes when she heard Cynthia’s apology for what she’d said. “No, you’re not sorry, because if you were, you’d remember that this happened to me last time too. It’s because I’m a fucking glutton for everything sweet that comes into my sight.”

“Don’t talk about yourself like that, I don’t like hearing you say such rude things about yourself.” Hanging her head, Cynthia bit down on her lip as she thought about if there was anything else she could say, but the sound of footsteps walking away from her let her know that she had wasted her opportunity. “I just…I didn’t mean to offend her or anything…”

Walking through the dining room to check her section and make sure the tables were all clean and ready, Severa saw that one of them was already seated and groaned at the idea of having to go over there and get an earful from people who’d been sat in a closed section. “Maybe they’ll see that I’m ginormous and give me a damn break about not rushing to them right away,” she told herself, rubbing at her stomach while she made her way towards the table. About halfway there, she accidentally tugged her shirt up out of her pants, which meant that she had to stop and correct that before anyone saw, but while she was focused on that she didn’t notice that the people at the table had both turned to look at her.

When she had it tucked back in the best she could, she looked up and saw the two faces pointed towards her. The first instinct she had was to get offended that they’d been watching, but then she actually looked at who was there, and her face went from trying to work through anger to complete surprise. As fast as she could, she made it to their table, bringing her hands up to her face as she worked through her conflicting emotions. “I really hoped when the guy up front said you were here today, he meant you and not someone else with your name,” the woman at the table said, her voice mostly flat but giving off just enough emotion to let Severa know that she was happy about this turn of events. “It’s been, what, five years since we last spoke?”

“It has, oh gods, it really has!” Despite being on the clock and supposed to be serving this table, not chatting with them, Severa slid into the chair next to the woman’s, giving her a quick one-armed hug while she had her other hand still covering her mouth. “What are you doing back around here, you guys? I thought you two left for good!”

“We thought we had too, but sometimes coming home for a while is best for everyone.” That was the man speaking, adjusting the sunglasses on his face so that he could look over them a small bit, while he spit his next statement out. “Or, should I say, it’s best for those of us who actually care about our parents.”

The woman raised her shoulders defensively, bringing her hands up in the air. “Whoa now, Gerome, I just said that coming and making sure they weren’t dead was a good idea. I didn’t say anything about one or both of us caring about them, I said that they hadn’t tried contacting us in a while and we needed to make sure they hadn’t kicked the bucket.”

Severa, still hugging the woman up until she mentioned a lack of contact, retracted her arm and scrambled to get to her feet as she realized what that had meant. “Your parents didn’t try getting you two to come to Cynthia’s wedding? They were all there, they spent the entire time with her parents, but they didn’t even bother trying to tell you to come?” She glanced towards the kitchen, where she saw Cynthia’s head poking around the corner to look at her own section of tables. “I should let her know you two are here, she’d be so happy to see you after that happened.”

One of the woman’s hands slammed down onto the table’s edge, while she too turned to look in the direction of Severa’s gaze. “She works here as well? Huh, never would have guessed she’d have it in her to serve tables. But, wait, she got married?” As quickly as she’d turned away, she was looking back towards Severa, waiting for an answer, but as Severa’s mind was focused on deciding whether or not to get Cynthia involved, she wasn’t given it. That left her the opportunity to take a good look at her server, though, head raising and turning a bit as she let her eyes cover every inch of her, before… “Oh good gods, before you talk to me about her, what did you do to yourself?”

“I got married to Brady like a year after you left, no big deal,” Severa replied, still looking towards where she’d seen Cynthia, but when her brown-haired friend disappeared into the kitchen and out of sight, she was looking back at the table, holding her left hand up to show off her ring. The man there gave an impressed smirk as he pushed his sunglasses back on his face properly, but the woman still looked like she was waiting for more explanation, eyebrows raised as she went from looking at the ring back to the stomach that hand was trying to obscure.

“And what about the other thing that’s clearly going on here?” the woman asked, trying not to sound impatient as she spoke. “Come on, it’s been five years, you’ve got to catch me up to everything we’ve missed since we’ve been gone.”

“Right, right, I guess I should get around to doing that.” Awkwardly laughing, Severa tried looking at her ring on her finger for herself, but all she could bring herself to look at was her stomach, feeling nothing but anxiety building inside of her as she tried to figure out how to condense the last few years into a quick and easy story that she could tell this table of old friends. “So, uh, if it’s not completely obvious, I’m kind of pregnant, and—“

“ _Kind of_? Look, I’ve seen my fair share of pregnant lades while we’ve been gone, and the way you seem to be, there’s no ‘kind of’ about it.” The woman’s eyebrows dropped as she gave a quick laugh. “I never would’ve expected this from you, Severa. Always thought you’d realize you could do so much more than marry your high school sweetheart and have his kid.” She laughed again, while Severa forced a smile to hide the fact that she didn’t like hearing what had just been said. “But what do I know, you could be lying to me and that’s just a sweets baby growing in there.”

“…It’s been five years and you haven’t changed a bit, Kjelle.” Her smile becoming more genuine, Severa gave a soft sigh as she looked between her old friends. “Neither of you really have, and that’s…wow. Let me get you two started with some drinks or something and then we can keep talking, okay?” It was weird to her to have to get back into the working mindset, but she was being paid to be there, even if it wasn’t much, so she needed to do work while she talked. Chatting with them had to happen in the time between dropping things off at their table and the other tables in her section that were getting seated, and if that meant small snippets of conversation, so be it.

It was only a mid-week lunch shift, though, so business never picked up too much, leaving her a lot of time to stand at their table and talk to them both. For every thing she had to reveal about what she’d done with her life, they each said something about theirs, leading to a lot of back and forth about her job versus their free-roaming lifestyle. “Okay, so, I think we’ve beat around this bush long enough,” Kjelle said after a moment of watching Severa absentmindedly rubbing her stomach. “How close to having that baby are you?”

“Not close at all,” she replied, her answer greeted with a grimace from Kjelle. “No, you don’t understand, I’m mostly just carrying cake weight at this point, it’s what happens to me when I’m pregnant and can’t resist anything sweet.”

“The way you’re talking makes it sound like you’ve been through this before.” As she watched Severa’s reaction, which was to deeply sigh, Kjelle propped her elbow on the table and set her jaw on her hand. “You have, haven’t you? I can’t believe this, what happened to the free-spirited Severa who didn’t want anyone to actually tie her down?”

“I don’t know, dating Brady for as long as I did must’ve made me change my mind.” Severa was reaching into her back pocket for her phone, so that she could show Kjelle a picture of Lunabel, but when she didn’t find her phone in either pocket, she groaned. “I’ll be right back, I can’t find what I’m looking for to show you something.”

As she walked away, Gerome was pulling his glasses down his face once more, locking eyes with Kjelle as she turned towards him. “Remind me again why you wanted to come see her first, of all people?”

“She was one of my best friends growing up and, well, you know about how she’s the reason why I—no, I’m not saying that here.” Shaking a hand in front of her throat to silence herself, Kjelle turned right back to where she’d been facing Severa, despite the other woman being gone. “We’ll talk about that when we’re out of here.”

“No need, I think I follow what you’re getting at.”

“What’s she getting at?” Coming back to the table by coming around its other side, Severa managed to catch them both by surprise, stunning them into a silence that she took as them not wanting to divulge anything. “I guess it was nothing,” she said, as she waved the phone she now had up in front of them. “Here, I needed to get this so I could show you a couple pictures, Kjelle. Hope you don’t mind that this is how you’re finding all this out.”

“I don’t mind at all,” she replied, looking at the phone’s screen as it was shown to them, the picture on it one of Lunabel from at her birthday party. “So that’s your other child, hm? Looks an awful lot like her father, doesn’t she?”

“That’s what some people say, but she’s clearly mine when you get to know her. Her name’s Lunabel, by the way, in case you were wondering.” Turning her phone back around as she looked for another good picture of the girl to show, Severa ended up flipping to a picture of a sonogram that she didn’t recall taking, until she zoomed in on it and saw that it most definitely wasn’t her own. However, seeing it gave her an idea, and so she was showing that picture to the two at the table as well. “This isn’t anything to do with Luna, or the new baby, or anything with me, actually,” she explained, having re-zoomed out on the picture so the name and details weren’t visible. “But you’ll never guess whose baby this is.”

“Huh, it would have to be someone who we also know, so I’m going to take a wild guess and say it’s Cynthia’s. Which you still haven’t even started explaining how she’s _married_ now, so we’re going to need some real answers on this one.” Kjelle looked from the picture over to Gerome, who was holding a curled hand to his mouth as he took in Kjelle’s guess plus the image itself. “Poor guy over there might’ve been hoping she’d be holding out for a hero like him when he came back.”

“Don’t you fucking lie about me like that,” Gerome coldly said, glaring up at Kjelle while she laughed. “I only said that because you forced me to.”

“Forced you to? I’d do no such thing, you liar.” Gesturing to wipe tears from her eye that had collected due to her laughter, Kjelle turned to Severa and saw her nodding at the guess she’d made. “Huh, how about that, though. Little Cynthia’s also gone from wild and free to being held down by some guy. You two have really changed.”

Severa shrugged, going back to flipping through pictures to see if she had any other good ones of Lunabel, which she knew she did but there was a difference between the good pictures to show old friends and good pictures a mother kept for her bad days. “I wouldn’t say we’ve changed so much as it is you haven’t,” she said as she kept looking, not paying attention to how Kjelle was making a face of disbelief at the statement. “I mean, aside from the fact that it looks like you’ve let your hair go back to natural color, everything about you is the same it was when we last saw each other. Both of you.”

“Face it, we’ve not exactly had the experiences needed to change like Severa here has.” Gerome, crossing his arms in front of him and sliding back into his chair, watched as Kjelle’s disbelieving look was turned towards him. “Think about it. How many times have we had to restart new because we didn’t find what we were looking for, wherever it was we were at the time? Countless times.”

“You were the one who always insisted we find somewhere new to scope after one run-through of the local scene on dating websites,” Kjelle replied, mimicking Gerome’s position down to the slightly cocky way he was sitting. There was a clanging of metal as she kicked her foot up into the chair next to his, her shoe hitting the lower rungs of the chair as she lifted it into position, but she seemed unfazed by it. “How many girlfriends have you managed to actually get since we left, huh? Bet I can count that number on one hand if I wanted to.”

“This isn’t about my lack of girlfriends, miss ‘I can bring the ladies home, but won’t sleep with them’. I can’t believe you’d try using that against me.” With the anger starting to boil between them, despite wanting to see what other points about their time away Gerome was going to throw out, Severa knew it was for the best if she took that moment to step away. She locked her phone’s screen as she shoved it into her back pocket, before heading towards the kitchen, hoping to cross paths with Cynthia while on the way.

While that didn’t happen, she was able to meet up with her friend while she was preparing a tray for one of her tables. “You won’t believe who’s here and sitting in my section,” she started, coming up behind Cynthia and giving her long ponytail a hard tug to startle the woman. When she got a shriek followed by a look that was only asking for the answer to the question, she was happy to deliver. “Some good old friends of ours. Friends that didn’t even know you’d gotten married because their parents never gave them their invites.”

It took Cynthia a second to get who was being referred to, time that she spent rubbing at her head where her hair had been hardest pulled, but when she put the pieces together her face lit up. “Kjelle and Gerome? They’re here? Right now?” Severa didn’t even have the time to give a proper nod before Cynthia was forgetting all about her tray she was supposed to be taking care of, rushing towards the exit from the kitchen to be shown where their friends were. “Oh gods, I didn’t think they’d ever actually come back! Do you think they’ll remember me? Did they remember you?”

“Why would they be at one of my tables if they didn’t remember me?” Catching up to Cynthia as fast as she could, Severa had to lean against the wall to give herself a moment to catch her breath while her friend excitedly looked out into the dining room, spotting the table in question and shaking from the joy she felt seeing it. “Okay, calm the hell down, you’re going to hurt yourself if you keep freaking out like this.”

“I’m just so happy to know they came back after all. Come on, come on, let’s go over there so I can talk to them!” Grabbing Severa’s arm and pulling her up off the wall, Cynthia lead their charge to the table, trying her hardest not to lose control of her excitement and start screeching when they got there. But when she saw both Kjelle and Gerome, their argument having finished without conflict, watching as she approached, she couldn’t help but squeal a small bit. “Hiya, friends! Bet you didn’t expect to see me working somewhere like this, did you? Just like I didn’t expect to see you dining somewhere like this!”

“Good to see that you haven’t lost your spunk, even if you’ve grown up a lot more than I thought you ever would.” At Cynthia’s appearance, Kjelle pulled her leg down off the other chair and pushed her own chair out, standing up to open her arms for both of the servers to come into a hug. Neither of them took up the offer right away, leading her to say, “Okay, I get you’re on the clock, but we haven’t seen each other in so long that one hug can’t be too bad. Now get into my arms, damn it.”

After looking between each other because of the roughness of the demand, the two gave in to the request and got wrapped up in one of the biggest hugs they’d experienced in a while, Kjelle squeezing them both as tightly as her muscular arms were capable of. However, even with the friendly nature of the hug, and the fact that it was multiple people and there were witnesses, Severa couldn’t help but feel like someone’s hand was brushing against her in odd places, and she was fairly certain the culprit there wouldn’t have been Cynthia. “You three can break apart any time now,” they heard Gerome say as he watched them getting all touchy-feely. “You’re getting an audience.”

That was incentive enough to end the hug, Kjelle grinning at the two as she pulled her arms away, one of them going up so that she could ruffle the back of her red hair. “We should do that again sometime, eh ladies?” she suggested, Severa and Cynthia once again sharing a look between them. “We’ve got a lot of catching up to do, and no matter how much talking we can do here it’s not going to be enough. I need the details on your lives, and I need them as soon as possible. Got that?”

“We’ve definitely got that, yeah!” Cynthia replied with a thumbs-up towards Kjelle, although Severa was inching backwards, unsure if she wanted in on that arrangement after all. She was used to people being a bit weird when it came to how they acted around pregnant ladies, but what had happened there in that hug wasn’t something she’d ever had happen to her before. Normally they’d go for touching her stomach without permission, not trying to grab anywhere else…

“What do you say, Severa? Dinner at our place later this week?” There must have been some conversation that had kept going that she’d lost focus of, because Kjelle was looking at her and expecting an answer to some offer she hadn’t actually heard be given. Swallowing whatever fears and worries she had on her mind, she gave a quick nod, not even processing that Kjelle had just mentioned having a meal at her _own_ place until it was hours later and she was trying to move completely past what had happened.

It was when Brady had come home and had asked about her day at work and why she seemed to be so out of it that the wording there clicked in her head, and all she could bring herself to say to him was, “I think I accepted a dinner invite to a one-time girlfriend’s house that may or may not exist, and I don’t know what to do about it.”

He was honestly as confused as to what to do as she was, which meant that when the fateful night came they just had to go together, Lunabel in tow. If this was any test of what kind of attraction to Severa that existed within Kjelle, it was best to crush it completely by her bringing her husband and child along. It didn’t seem to be a test, however, not when it ended up being merely a night of talking and dining in a cramped apartment filled with boxes that hadn’t even been unpacked yet. But the fear remained in Severa’s mind every time she looked at Kjelle and how happy she seemed to be in the company of her grown-up friends, and she was sure that wasn’t going to change right away.


	4. Unwanted Introductions

Walking out of the doctor’s office one mid-spring morning, the first words that came out of Severa’s mouth once the door had closed behind her and Brady were words of worry that she’d had been voicing every so often since it had become incredibly obvious she was pregnant. “What do we do about telling Luna?” she asked, placing her hand over the two little decorative handprints on the stomach of the shirt she was wearing. “I’m not surprised she hasn’t figured it out yet, but she…”

“She needs to know, yeah, I hear ya on that.” Brady took in a deep breath, adjusting how he was holding an envelope up against his leg. “Bet now’s the best time to tell her, anyway, now that we can tell her not just that it’s a baby, but that it’s a—“ He was stopped from speaking not by Severa (because she was nodding in agreement with what she knew he was about to say), but by someone loudly yelling his name from down the street. His head turned in that direction and he sighed. “—damn it, so much for having a little alone time right now to figure this all out,” he grumbled, shaking his head. “Looks like we’ve gotta tell them all right now instead of waitin’ to know how we’re gonna manage it.”

“Oh good, I’ll come up with something to make it easy.” Rolling her eyes as she looked in the direction of the quickly-approaching group that had spotted them, Severa went from being slightly bothered by them to disgusted in a matter of seconds. “Are they…they’re making Luna _walk_ with them? Hold the fuck up, that wasn’t part of the agreement here.”

Brady reached out to grab Severa’s arm before she could try to charge at the people as they came to meet up with them right there outside the office. “Don’t do anything, Sev. I’m sure there’s some reason they’ve got her walkin’, I mean, there’s not much they can do about carrying her when one of them’s gotta push that stroller, you know?”

“There’s two of them, whichever one wasn’t pushing the stroller could carry her.” Her eyes narrowing as she watched her daughter struggling to keep a good pace alongside the two adults and the large stroller she was currently with, Severa had to resist saying something spiteful when they all stopped, even though she knew she was more than capable of jerking out of Brady’s grasp to start a physical altercation.

“Man, we thought we had enough time to go around the block again, you guys sure got done early, didn’t you?” Sounding slightly out of breath, as if he’d been running for a while, Owain smiled at the couple, not even noticing that Severa looked like she was out for his blood. When he saw Brady give a small shrug while he lifted up his hand holding that envelope, his smile got bigger, but before he said anything about that he turned his attention to the little girl who was doubled over and gasping for air next to him. “Sorry we couldn’t find what you wanted today, Luna. We sure did try, though, didn’t we?”

The girl’s response was barely eked out, her words punctuated with her heavy breathing, and just hearing it made Brady lower his hand a bit. “Uh, yeah, you weren’t makin’ her run, were ya? She’s not exactly built for running faster than her own pace, makes her foot start botherin’ her and…” His voice trailed off as he watched Lunabel stand back up straight, her face completely red from exertion, just for her to give two thumbs-up as she continued struggling to breathe. “You did, you really did. Gods damn it Owain, we put her in your care for an hour and you tried to kill her.”

“Don’t put your daughter’s decision on Owain’s shoulders,” Noire said, not sounding winded at all even though it was her hands on the stroller that carried the two sleeping twins in it. In fact, she sounded like their bout of physical activity hadn’t bothered her at all, which allowed for her to get rather forceful with what else she had to say. “I offered to carry her, she refused, please don’t get mad about us not forcing her to do something.”

“Luna would never refuse to be carried. Something here’s not addin’ up.” Passing off what he held to Severa, her close to losing her restraint and lashing out of the two, Brady opened his arm up for her daughter to run into, which she did. As he picked her up, he noticed that she smelled all too strongly of frosting, and judging by how she was glancing around and seemed to be unable to get still even though she was being held, he knew what had happened. “You gave her something sweet to eat, didn’t you?”

“She might have found some cookies I’d brought with us, yes, and I might have given her a couple before we went on our walk. Is there a problem with that?” Keeping a peaceful smile on her face, Noire waited for someone to claim that there was a problem with that decision, something that didn’t come.

It only didn’t come because Severa heard the word “cookies” and immediately went from being livid about what had happened with Lunabel to really wanting a cookie for herself. “You, uh, didn’t give her all the cookies, did you?” she sheepishly asked, feeling the strong desire to have one overtake her, and when Noire shook her head her face lit up. “Mind giving me one, or two, or the rest? I could really use them.“

“Sev, you don’t need any cookies at all. Luna havin’ them is bad enough, but she at least was runnin’ around after she got them. All you’re doin’ is making things harder for yourself.” Even with Brady saying no, Noire was still digging through the back pouch of the stroller to get the rest of the cookies out for Severa, and once she had them for herself she was never going to let them go. “Y’know what, when you’ve managed to eat yourself out of all the clothes you’ve got, I’m not going to listen to your complaining about it.”

“I’m not going to do that, don’t worry. I know my limits.” Smirking as she popped a cookie in her mouth, Severa gave Brady a quick wink, trying to convince him to believe what she’d just said. When she got a slow shake of the head as a response, all she could think of doing was proving him wrong, but in this situation proving him wrong would be to only have the one cookie and she just couldn’t do that. There was something about Noire’s baking that was still irresistible, and because she was baking so much less because of having to take care of her own kids, it made the times when she had treats to share that much more special.

“Anyway, not trying to distract from Severa stuffing her face, but do we want to find somewhere to hang out that isn’t, uh, right here?” Owain was looking towards the office building they were standing in front of as he spoke. “I don’t think all the people who’d be coming here want this group out here blocking their way, you know?”

The general consensus was that he was right and that they should move elsewhere, but the question of where to go was raised and no one had an answer for that, until Brady had a moment to think about where they were. “We’re close to downtown right now, so we could always head down to the flower shop to see if Inigo’s there. Bet he’d love to see his friends all out like this,” he suggested, but as it was the only suggestion actually made that became the plan, and after figuring out what direction they needed to head in they all started for their destination. “Okay, but while we walk, I think there’s something that we need to tell everyone here,” he said, after glancing towards Severa and watching her continue with eating those cookies. “Sev, cookies down, we’re going to tell them.”

“Why’re we doing that now?” she asked after she swallowed down her last mouthful of frosted cookie. “I haven’t thought about how we’re going to break the news to Luna yet, wasn’t that important?”

The girl, at hearing her name, cocked her head to one side as she looked to her mother. “What, Mama? News for Luna?”

“Yeah, news for you, sweetie. Just let me…ugh, fucking hell I need another hand for this.” Severa was currently holding both the envelope and the cookie bag in one hand, her other hand covered in frosting she was having to resist licking off her fingers. “Anyone want to help me out so I can do this?” After halting all forward progress for a minute or two so Noire could take her cookies back from Severa and then Severa could go ahead and just lick her fingers to make sure they were clean, they were back on track and she was tapping that envelope against her now-clean hand. “Okay, so I haven’t put a bit of thought into this, because I have no idea how you’re supposed to tell a kid this, but…”

“Mama, please be okay,” Lunabel quietly said, before kicking her father as hard as she could with one leg, causing him to yelp and stop walking to drop her onto the ground. She glared up at him, not having wanted to have been put down, but she made her way to her mother’s side and started reaching up for her to pick her up. “Hold me, Mama, please?”

“Luna, I’d love to, but you see…” Smiling down at the girl and trying to make it look at least mostly genuine, Severa motioned towards her stomach with the hand that was still holding the envelope. “It’s not exactly going to work out right now. If you want to be held, your dad can do it.”

Lunabel jutted her lower lip out, eyes narrowing as she began glaring at her mother. “Mama’s hands still do hold-y-ing, Mama can hold me,” she defiantly replied, balling one hand into a fist and swinging it at her mother’s leg, hitting her and making her quickly go from smiling to returning the glare in an instant. “Please Mama, hold me.”

“I just can’t, Luna. Not right now.” The words were spoken with disgust, Severa not liking at all how Lunabel was acting, and when her refusal sank in, the girl was lashing out once more, aiming to swing that fist again. The target, had she not been scooped up by her father before she could do anything, would have been right in the side of Severa’s stomach, which gave the woman the idea she needed for how to break the news to the girl. “I’d love to hold you, if you were behaving and if I wasn’t so busy already holding someone else,” she explained, watching as Lunabel went from trying to resist her father’s grasp to slowly trying to make sense of what she’d just heard. “You can’t really see her right now, but I’m—“

“Hold on a second, did you say _her_? As in, another little girl to add to the collection our group of friends seems to be making?” Even though he was a few steps ahead (and was making sure to remain so, just in case the family behind him had to stop walking for whatever reason), Owain had heard what Severa had said and was grabbing onto Noire to get her to stop walking as he turned around to face the other two adults. “That’s awesome, you two! I bet Luna’s going to be great to a little sister!”

“Sister…?” Having stopped fighting her situation entirely, Lunabel was quickly looking between her parents, entire jaw trembling as she spoke. “Why a sister? Sisters are icky!”

“Trust me, we were hoping it would be a boy so we could name him after his grandfathers, but a sister’s not that big of a deal.” Now that they’d all stopped walking once again, just in the middle of the sidewalk somewhere on the way to their destination, Severa was focused enough on what she was talking about to open the envelope she was holding to pull the pictures out of it. “They gave us a good look at her, said she’s definitely a she and that both her feet seem perfectly normal, and that she’s growing like a fucking weed in there, but she’s, well,” she offered the pictures over to Owain, who grabbed them like a kid would grab a favorite toy, “she’s real and she’s going to be joining us in a few months’ time.”

“Now you know why your mama’s not been picking you up so much lately, right Luna?” Brady asked his daughter, who was still in a state of trembling at the news. “And why she’s been eatin’ all the sweets in the kitchen before you get any, but that’s for the best.”

Blinking, a few tears rolled down onto Lunabel’s cheeks as she started rapidly shaking her head. “I don’t wanna get a sister!” she shrieked. “No sister! No babies! Please no!” She was once again trying to get out of her father’s arms, but he was pulling her in closely to tightly hug her, the way she was so upset starting to upset him as well. “Dada, make it stop!”

“I can’t do anything about it, Luna. It’ll be fine and you’ll love her, just like we’ll love you and her both.” He was choking up as he tried to be reassuring, causing more of a scene there on the sidewalk than there needed to be. “Please don’t cry, dear, it’s all okay.”

“If you ever want to borrow one of my kids to let Lunabel experience what it’s like to have a baby around more and more, I will gladly let you,” Noire offered, after she got to look at one of the pictures Owain was shoving in her face. “They’ve both gotten to be rather well-behaved, so letting her sit with one wouldn’t be too much of a problem. I’m sure you’d want to use Ophelia to get the actual ‘sister’ experience, but either one would work, I think.”

“No offense, Noire, but I don’t think letting Luna be around either of them would really work right now,” Severa replied, taking the kind gesture to heart but knowing all-too-well that it would just end up going over very badly, given how against the whole situation Lunabel seemed to be. “Maybe in a couple months, after we’ve convinced Luna there’s no other way but to get this little sister, but not right now.”

It was a gentle way to reject the offer, but something didn’t sit right with Noire, leading her to snap back with, “Well good, I didn’t want to let a bitch like you or your demon child watch either of my babies to begin with,” before she started pushing the stroller down the street again unprompted.

“I, er, I think I should follow her. Meeting at the flower shop, right?” Owain didn’t even wait for an answer before he was dashing off after Noire, her picking up speed with every step, and he didn’t even have the courtesy of handing back the pictures to Severa before he left. He didn’t take them with him, however, as they flew from his hand when he turned to run, the papers hitting the ground in front of them.

“What did I even say to piss her off this time?” Severa asked, looking down at the pictures she was now expected to bend over and pick up. “I don’t think I can get down low enough to get those for myself right now, either. Damn it Owain, why’d you marry a psychotic freak who loses her mind at the slightest things?”

“Don’t worry, I’ve got it,” Brady assured her with a sniffle, setting Lunabel down to get the pictures for himself, but he forgot that setting the child down was not going to end well in this situation. She saw that she was on equal footing with whatever it was that had been passed around that was about the sister she didn’t want, and without giving it a split second’s thought she was jumping onto the closest of the pictures, grinding it into the ground with her feet.

Both her parents, caught by surprise by her behavior, called out her name to reprimand her, but she smirked at them for it. “Bye-bye sister,” she said, grinding the picture into the ground a bit more. “Not having a sister today, nope!”

“Luna, get off the picture, we’re supposed to take that to your grandparents so they can all see it.” Brady was looking at the girl with pleading eyes, hoping that his calm and steady voice, despite being quite upset with her at what she’d done, would convince her to behave again. All it accomplished was getting her to leave that particular picture alone, just to go to the other two that had been dropped, picking them up, and ripping them both in half with that same smirk on her face.

“I’m going to kill her,” Severa said, her voice nowhere near steady as she stared wide-eyed at what her daughter had just done. “Those were the visual proof we had for everyone to see the new baby we made, and they’re ruined. All of them.”

As he was picking up the image that had been stomped on, Brady sighed. “There’s only three of them out here, and they gave us four, so I think ya managed to save one after all, but knowin’ our luck it’s going to be the worst quality one of them all. Mind checkin’ the envelope to see if there really is one there?”

“Yeah, sure thing,” she replied, reaching into the envelope and indeed finding one last sonogram picture that she must have missed when she’d grabbed the other ones. “Huh, looks like it’s a pretty good one. Don’t have a clear view of what makes her a her, but you can see her hand in this one, kind of like she’s waving at us.”

He was still looking at the one he’d picked up, all while Lunabel continued ripping the other two into smaller and smaller pieces. “This one’s got some footprint marks that won’t go away, but I think it’s salvageable. Put them away before Luna decides she’s ripping them up too.” Handing the picture over to Severa so she could put it and the one in her own hand away, Brady then turned his attention to the gleeful ripping that Lunabel was partaking in. “As for you, little girl, what are we gonna do with you? You’re being really bad right now.”

“Not bad, I am a good girl,” Lunabel said in response, throwing her now-shredded papers above her head and letting the bits fall all over her while she laughed. “Dada, please no more about the sister.”

“You see, there’s really nothing we can do about her existing at this point, Luna. It’s just kinda a thing that’s happening.” He glanced towards Severa, who was looking at the girl with disgust while resting her hand on her stomach, her palm covering the little handprints on her shirt once more. “If you want, maybe after we’ve punished ya for what you’ve done, we could let ya feel your sister move or something, but right now you’re gettin' nothing close to that. You’re in big trouble, kid.”

Lunabel’s face went from proud of what she’d done to scared for her life in a flash, her starting to shake her head and repeat that she was a good girl over and over, while her father picked her up and threw her over his shoulder. “Dada, please! It wasn’t a bad, it wasn’t!” she screamed, beating on his back with her fists. “I am a good girl!”

“Right now I prefer your sister to you, and she’s not even born yet,” he told her, trying to ignore the fact that her screaming made him feel horrible inside. “She’s at least not actively destroying things because she’s not getting her way.”

“Someday she will, if she ends up being anything like Luna is.” Severa rolled her eyes, casting one last glance at the ripped-up pictures that she’d been accepting the necessity of before she started walking in the direction they’d been going in before. “Come on, let’s just see if we can catch up to Owain and Noire before they forget they’ve got some of our stuff in their stroller and ditch us completely.”

After Brady did the same thing regarding the mess left behind, he was following in his wife’s footsteps, making sure to keep the still-screaming Lunabel out of her reach in case mother or child decided they wanted to pick a fight. By the time they got to the familiar street that he’d spent a lot of time on walking to the flower shop, they could see the people that had left them behind earlier, standing outside the rather plain exterior of the shop. “What took you so long to meet back up with us?” Owain asked, noticing that Lunabel was throwing a fit as she was being held. “Is she getting restless? Does she need to nap? I mean, I’m sure we could get one of the twins out of the stroller if we really need to so she can sleep.”

“She ripped up pictures you dropped, asshole,” Severa bluntly told him, making Owain cringe at the way her tone was attacking him. “She’s not taking this ‘little sister’ thing well at all, and I bet it has something to do with you and your kids.”

“I don’t know how that would be possible, she’s only ever had great times with them! Like, oh! Like today while we were waiting for you to get done, she seemed to be having fun talking to them even though they were asleep.” Pausing to think, Owain brought a hand to his chin and stroked it gently. “Or maybe she was having fun just yelling at someone. Does she like doing that?”

Blankly staring at Owain like he’d just asked the stupidest question possible, Severa flatly said, “No, she hates yelling at people. She’s a pure and innocent child who’d never do a damn thing— _yes_ she likes just yelling to yell, you dipshit! She probably thinks that her sister’s going to be just like your babies, and therefore just someone else to yell at when she’s feeling obnoxious! Ugh!” Having already shoved the envelope and what remained of the pictures within it into her pocket, she put both hands to the sides of her head and ran her fingers through her loose hair, dragging them through it to try calming herself down. “I hate you so much right now, Owain.”

“Hate me? I didn’t even do anything!” Now it was Owain’s turn to get frustrated at what was happening, not sure why Severa was lashing out at him so harshly and completely unconvinced that he deserved it. “It’s not my fault that your kid doesn’t get along well with others, that’s all on you.”

“Stop fighting, you guys,” Brady interjected, trying to make himself be heard over Lunabel’s continued screaming. “This isn’t the time or the place for that, if ya want to argue we can just head back to someone’s place and do it there. We’re here to see if Inigo’s around, right? Even if everything’s gone to shit otherwise we can still keep with that plan.”

“It would be better if he was actually here, though.” Looking at the darkened entrance to the flower shop, Noire was keeping herself calm and as removed from the arguing as she could after her earlier bout of anger. “The sign on the door says they’re closed today due to ‘unforeseen circumstances’, whatever those might be.”

The looming fighting subsided as Noire quoted what the sign said, because at the mention of something being “unforeseen” Severa was beginning to grow worried as to what could have happened. “I…don’t like the sound of that,” she said, as she gestured towards Brady with an outstretched hand so that he could give him her phone from his pocket, but as he was busy trying to get Lunabel to stop crying he didn’t see the motion. “Someone should check on Cynthia, see if she’s okay. I’d hate for us to all be out like this and for her to be suffering.”

“It’s not Cynthia, I already had that thought and called her, she said it was something to do with the dance studio.” Noire turned to face her friends, her eyes closed as she smiled at them. “So clearly it’s something to do with Inigo’s mother, if not him himself.”

“Then why are we still hanging around here?” Owain asked after clearing his throat, letting the last words of his argument go away unsaid. “We’ve got to go see what’s up, don’t we?”

“Yes, because that’s exactly what we want to do when we’ve got a screaming three-year-old with us,” Severa sarcastically replied, but Owain was once again getting ahead of himself and running in the direction he felt they needed to go, his phone out in his hand in front of him. “Great, he’s gone already. So much for telling him to chill the fuck out.”

“Knowing him, he probably started his game and wants to get everything he can between here and there,” Noire suggested, as she turned her attention back to the stroller she was in charge of, getting it faced in the correct direction before heading off after Owain. She stopped after a few steps, laughing as she did. “You might want to get that game for yourselves, it made walking with Lunabel a lot easier than you’d expect. She would do anything to chase down some of the cuter monsters.”

As Noire resumed walking, Severa looked to Brady with raised eyebrows. “You hear that? She thinks that we’re going to want to waste our time doing that stupid shit just to amuse Luna. I love the girl, but only good kids get that kind of treatment.”

“Don’t say things like that when she can hear you, Sev, it’s only going to make everything worse.” True to the point Brady was making, Lunabel had been calming down slightly when she heard her mother grumble something about how she was a bad kid, which made her pick up crying once more. “See, look at that, she’s cryin’ all over again. And who’s job is it to make her stop? Mine. Since you can’t be bothered to carry her right now.”

“What did I say before? I’m already carrying one kid, I don’t need to have to carry her too.” He rolled his eyes at her comeback, which had her starting to laugh at how funny she felt she was. Since he wasn’t amused, though, she stopped herself relatively quickly and, after coughing to muffle the last stray giggles, she said, “Let’s go see whatever shitshow’s happening at the dance studio, I suppose. Do you think everything’s okay?”

Brady shrugged, not really listening to her anymore past her suggesting that they get going. When she didn’t get her response, she started walking off without him, leaving him to trail behind her at her pace, watching the slightly exaggerated sway in her body as she kept moving forward. “Ya know, you’re already startin’ to walk like ya did in the last few weeks before Luna was born,” he remarked, watching as her whole upper body stiffened at the words. “I’m not sayin’ that’s a sign or anything, but it might be a sign that something’s different this time.”

“Nothing’s different, aside from us already having a kid to take care of,” she replied, letting her body relax once more. “If something was different, we’d have been told about that today. But nope, it’s all exactly the same as last time.”

“I’m just sayin’, you’re pretty big already and—“

“Brady, do _not_ talk to me about how big you think I am.” Anger at that topic of conversation was rising in Severa’s chest, and despite knowing that she needed to focus on where she was walking she stole a quick glance down at herself. She was sure her mental image of what she’d looked like the last time she’d been pregnant was skewed, but she was also sure that the way she looked now wasn’t much different from it. “I’ve been doing relatively good this time about everything. Like, I haven’t gotten nearly as many sweets as I did last time.” To keep herself from losing her temper because of the accusation, she added, “I’d say, unlike last time, only half this weight is cake weight. I’m doing better, really.”

He waited until he knew she was done defending herself before he said anything else, not wanting to cut her off and start another argument. “I get that, but it seems like, to me, something here’s not right about how you look.” She stopped dead in her tracks and turned to give him an icy glare, which he sighed at. “Not saying I don’t think you’re still great-looking, because you are, but I just don’t think you should be lookin’ like this already.”

“Your opinion is invalid because you don’t know what it’s like to be pregnant, jerk.” Sticking her tongue out at him, Severa turned back to focusing on walking, seeing a gathered crowd up ahead that was blocking the sidewalk. She was trying to place where they were and how far from their destination they still were, but as she wasn’t sure how many blocks they’d gone, or how far the dance studio was from the flower shop, she wasn’t of much use.

However, Brady had made the walk between the two places many times and was hesitantly looking at the crowd in front of them. “These don’t look like people from around here, but why are they hangin’ around outside the studio of all places?”

“This is where the studio is?” Severa asked, sounding genuinely surprised, and when Brady gave a small grunt in reply she looked at the crowd with a different mindset, trying to reach a conclusion that explained what was happening. “Huh, how about that. Maybe someone there did something to piss every single tourist in town off. Sounds like an Inigo thing to do.”

“No one seems like they’re raisin’ pitchforks at the place, so I think you might be wrong on that one, Sev,” Brady said with a laugh, stopping to stand right beside Severa as she continued looking at the crowd. “Besides, if they were here to cause problems, I think we’d see our friends in all of it trying to get them to stop. But I don’t see a hair of Owain or Noire’s heads, which means they must’ve made it through the crowd. Shall we try for ourselves?”

Her head turned towards him, her eyes instinctively narrowing as she brought both arms in front of her as a protective measure. “I’d rather not, who knows if any of those people there won’t realize they can’t push back if I push them.”

“Fair enough,” he replied, sidling up next to her and making her inch her way towards the front of the building next door to the studio. “We’ll stand watch for if either of our friends come back. If they do, great! If they don’t, then you’re stuck watchin’ Luna while I chase them down to get our stuff out of their stroller and start headin’ home.”

“I…don’t know if I’m down for that plan, but it’ll work in a pinch.” With her arms still in front of her, Severa was now looking towards Lunabel, the girl sniffling as she was calming down from her fit. “I’d hope she’d behave if you did leave her with me, she’s not getting away with being so nasty about having a sister.”

The corners of the girl’s mouth fell as far as they could, Lunabel’s red and teary eyes meeting her mother’s after a couple moments of trying to keep from making eye contact. “Babies are icky, so sisters are icky,” she stated, before sticking her tongue out and blowing a loud raspberry that made her forget she was trying her hardest to be upset and start giggling instead. “I don’t wanna have a icky yucky sister.”

“You’ll get used to the idea eventually, I hope,” Severa told her with a smile, not sure if she ever would because she didn’t know what it was like to know about getting a sibling. “Maybe after you’re done being punished for the stunt you pulled, we’ll get to spend some great time together that isn’t ruined by your sister.”

“Okay, Mama, I like that.” Lunabel sounded sullen, even though she had just been laughing; she had come to realize that the looming punishment for her behavior wasn’t going to go away no matter how hard she tried, but she was still trying to repent for what she’d done, leading her to ask, “Will Mama hold me now?”

“I, uh, I really can’t,” she was told, Severa not moving her arms at all as she spoke. “I think you’re too big for me to comfortably hold while I’m standing like this. When we’re home, I’ll hold you on the couch or something, but for right now you’ve just got to understand that I’m not hurting myself to hold you.”

Puckering her lips in disgust, Lunabel dramatically rolled her eyes but didn’t say anything else. “I’m glad you’re thinkin’ about what’s best for the baby that needs it, rather than just trying to appeal to Luna,” Brady said as he felt Lunabel snuggle herself down into his back and shoulders. “Here I was, getting worried that ya weren’t going to find a way to balance playing mom to both of them, but you’ve found a way after all.”

“I’m not a horrible person, I think I can manage raising one kid while being pregnant with another,” Severa snapped, before gasping at her own brashness. She quickly looked to see if she’d offended Brady with what she’d said, but based on how he was trying his hardest not to smile she was sure he was finding her comment more amusing than anything. “Okay, seriously, I’m not horrible, but that was a bad way to word that.”

“It’s been a ride of a day already, I can forgive why you’re bein’ so harsh to everyone you’re speaking to today.” Finally letting that smile shine through at her, Brady went from watching her face light up in relief to looking back at the crowd, seeing a familiar face coming towards them, stroller in tow. “Looks like Noire’s headin’ this way, you want to do the talking or should I?”

“You do it, I’d rather not misspeak and have her go ballistic on me again.”

“I figured you’d say something like that.” Shrugging, Brady watched as Noire came to stand right in front of them, her eyes narrowed as she slowly rocked the stroller back and forth, trying to keep the two now-wailing babies in it from getting too much louder. “Hey now, what happened to them sleeping like rocks? Did someone over in that crowd disturb them?”

Shaking her head, Noire explained, “No, it was my fault that they woke up, someone brushed against me and I lost control of my tongue for a moment, which shocked them both to being awake. Someone should…I shouldn’t have…” She looked back to where she’d emerged from the crowd, sighing as she did. “Owain was trying to find Inigo in that mess and he got cornered and separated from me, so I did what I could to find him but had to get away when it got to be too overwhelming. Someone should go find him.”

Understanding why she was sighing, Brady cast a pleading look at Severa, who shook her head at him. “I’m not holding Luna so you can go find your cousin,” she said, “so either set her down and get going, or take her with you. Those are your two options.”

“Actually, if you’ll keep rocking the stroller, I’ll gladly hold Lunabel for you two,” Noire offered, and with the genuine kindness in her voice it was hard to resist taking her up on it. Even with the knowledge that relying on her wasn’t necessarily the best idea, Brady really didn’t want to take Lunabel into the mess of a crowd with him, but he also didn’t want to leave her laying on the ground next to her mother who wouldn’t bother even trying to hold her. He ended up accepting Noire’s conditions, even if Severa didn’t seem to be pleased about being in charge of the whining twins, and the moment Lunabel was safely held in Noire’s arms he was heading towards the crowd in search of Owain.

Pushing his way towards the door of the studio was a lot easier than he’d expected it to be, but given his tall and somewhat intimidating stature it wasn’t too surprising. It also gave him the advantage that no one else in the group (minus the person he was looking for) had: the ability to scout out people over everyone else’s heads. True to Noire’s word, it seemed that Owain had gotten himself cornered, surrounded by a couple of guys who didn’t look to be from around the area. “H-hey, you can really stop rubbing up against me,” he heard Owain’s voice say as he got closer, making him worried for his cousin’s safety. “I get that you’re really touchy-feely, but I am married and I do have kids, you know…”

“I just wanted to see if your core felt as strong as it looked to be,” a foreign voice replied, dripping with sultry tones that sounded like they were completely genuine. “It’s a shame that you’re taken, you’d make for quite the stunning armpiece.”

“I don’t even care about the romantic stuff you’re throwing around right now,” the other person said, getting right into Owain’s face as Brady watched from a few feet away. “I saw some of those gems he had on his phone, I want to know exactly how he got them. I’ve been trying for weeks now to catch anything good, you’ve got to tell me your secrets!”

“You’re kidding me, Owain gets trapped by a dude playing his dumb game and a guy who wants to date him?” Brady asked himself, chuckling before he cupped his hands around his mouth and called out, “Yo, Owain, what’re you doing in here? What’s going on?”

Up against the wall, pinned behind the two strangers, Owain slid a bit lower as he heard his name in Brady’s voice, not wanting to justify him with a response. “Is that your loverboy there looking for you?” the first man asked, running a finger along one side of Owain’s jaw, while the other man tried frisking his pockets for any sight of his phone and what he’d seen on it. “Or is it someone else concerned for your well-being?”

“It’s my cousin,” he answered, still sinking lower to try and get out of the two men’s reach. “I really should get going now, playing this game with you two’s been fun, but—“

“Hold it right now.” A third voice broke through the sound of the bustling room, people falling silent as a russet-haired man approached the scene. From where he was standing just a bit away, Brady was unsure of how someone else had gotten through without him see it, but he was sure that Owain was glad that Inigo had appeared out of thin air and come to his rescue. He grabbed both the men holding his friend hostage and pulled them back a few steps, looking at them both with an ashamed expression. “I cannot believe you two came all this way to start attacking a dear friend of mine. What did he do to you to deserve this?”

“You’ve gotten to know me rather well as of late, Inigo darling, you know that when I see a beautiful man I must investigate him for myself.” Bowing his head in shame, that man stepped aside willingly, the second one following in his footsteps after longingly looking at Owain for a few seconds more. “Let’s see if we can find anyone else of interest, or at least, of my own interest. Maybe someone’ll have a sign or something you can take as a keepsake of this day, Keaton.”

“Yeah right, no one here’s got anything I want, except for that guy!” Waving a hand towards Owain, the man known as Keaton had his other arm grabbed and was dragged away, the pair passing by Brady as he watched in confusion at what the two were doing in a place like this, and why Inigo seemed to have known them.

At any rate, he’d get his answers soon enough, especially after he made his way over to where Owain was still slouching against the wall, Inigo standing in front of him much like the two strange men had been moments before. “I really do apologize for this, the people that have come into town for the summer’s events are quite the bunch,” Inigo was saying. “I never knew that being part of the dance company that is putting on such a big festival would result in mobs like this coming in on a daily basis.”

“This is normal for you now?” Owain asked, trying to scoot himself back up to more of a standing position, but only managing to slide down further towards the floor when Inigo nodded. “Damn, and here I was thinking you had a pretty normal thing here. Who were those guys?”

Trying to ease his way into their conversation without coming as much of a shock, Brady offered out the one bit of information he’d heard that he was also sure Owain had heard. “Pretty sure the wild-looking one’s name is Keaton, if that’s any help.” He got two people facing him as he finished speaking, both men seeming happy to see him.

“That would be correct, Keaton’s a wonderful performer as the wolf in any recital, but off-stage I suppose he keeps his wild demeanor and doesn’t quite understand that physical limits are a thing.” Inigo shrugged, finally offering a hand towards Owain so that the blond didn’t hit the floor with how much he was sliding. “The other one, also completely unaware that people have boundaries, is the pride and joy of the adults-only Nohrian dance troupe, stage name Zero, real name Niles. Quite the…fellow, I would say.”

“He grabbed me in places only Noire should be grabbing,” Owain said, unable to get much more straightforward with his point than he had. “I can see why he’s an adults-only kind of performer. What’re people like that doing here?”

“I’ve told you about this several times now, Owain. There’s a festival happening in town that my parents have had a fairly large share of putting together, meaning that the studio here is one of the hotspots for the activity.” Sighing deeply, Inigo looked at what remained of the large crowd in the entryway, shaking his head at all the people pushing their way in. “The insanity will surely fade as events begin, but for now all hell has broken loose around here and I’m stuck having to orchestrate all the different performances involving the less-than-pure gentlemen, while my mother takes charge of the women’s dances.”

“That would explain why the flower shop was closed when we went down there.” Also looking around at who all was still in the area, Brady couldn’t help but wonder what kinds of performers a lot of these people were, and why they were so important as to cause such a scene like this one. “Bet your parents are going to miss the peace and quiet of just runnin’ that and occasionally bein’ up here, huh?”

Inigo shrugged at the question, before explaining his hesitance at agreeing, “It’s always been a dream of Mother’s to run a successful theater, and if all goes well this summer, she might move to just running the dance studio to train dancers for said theater she’s trying to build with the funds raised by doing this. Father’s always been one for travelling and meeting interesting people from all over the world, hence why there’s so many foreigners here for the events. I would much rather be selling flowers than dealing with this, but I’ve known it’s been in my blood all along.”

“Interesting, we’re going to have to come check out some of what you’re putting on once the performances actually start! Uh, as long as neither of those guys from earlier happen to see me around again, that is.” Owain scratched the back of his head, laughing as he did. “I should go find where Noire got off to and let her know that I didn’t get robbed or attacked too badly in here without her. Care to come with?”

Inigo refused the offer, citing that he needed to stick around to keep people from breaking into the main part of the studio, but Brady knew exactly where Noire was and knew that he needed to get back there as well. “I bet, between her and Sev, they’ve either got three sleeping kids or three dead ones,” he jokingly said, before realizing that the joke wasn’t really that funny and seemed to raise a panic within Owain. “Hey man, it wasn’t serious, they’re all okay and—you’re leaving already, nice.” As he was trying to talk, Owain was already beginning to push through the crowd trying to leave, not caring that he was leaving behind the person that was coming with him.

At least keeping up with him wasn’t too hard, given Brady’s ability to see exactly where he was at all times thanks to their heights. Once they’d broken out of the crowd outside the building, the blond man stopped to catch his breath and make sense of where he was located, giving his cousin a perfect opportunity to catch back up with him. “We came up the street when we got here, right?” Owain asked once he saw that Brady was right beside him, getting no answer because Brady wasn’t sure if that was the case or not because he hadn’t arrived there initially with him. “Which should mean that Noire and Severa and all the kids are waiting for us somewhere this way, shouldn’t it?” He looked down the street seeing people walking away from the crowd but no familiar faces. “So where are they?”

“I don’t have the slightest clue,” Brady admitted, as he looked straight to where he was positive he’d left them behind. “They’re not waitin’ for us where they should’ve been.”

“That’s because we moved, idiots.” Somehow, without them realizing it, the others had ended up behind them, and judging by how Severa was sounding amused as she spoke, it wasn’t for any bad reason. The two men turned around to see the ladies and the three children, two of them once again asleep in the stroller while the third was focused back on the crowd in Noire’s arms. “People kept walking past us asking what kind of fucked up harem thing we had going on, so we decided to move to get away from it.”

“People really don’t understand how women can have a day out with friends even after having children,” Noire added, offering Lunabel back over to Brady, the girl whining a bit as she was exchanged between hands but resuming looking at the crowd almost immediately. “It was almost embarrassing at times, how rude the people were as they asked about what was going on between us.”

“Also didn’t help that some of those people came by in large groups and…oh, forget it, it’s over and I’m not dwelling on it.” Draping one arm around Brady as she leaned into his side, Severa loudly sighed. “I just want to go home and be done with today, I’m already dreading how the next few days are going to go while we tell everyone what’s happening.”

“It can’t possibly go that badly,” Brady assured her, resting his head on the top of hers for a second, before he saw Lunabel sneakily reaching towards her mother’s hair, and rather than letting her do whatever it was she was plotting he jerked her away, knocking Severa off balance and nearly toppling her over, a perfect way to reinforce the reality that everything right then could and would indeed go badly if given the chance.

* * *

Telling everyone the gender news went over fairly well, up until the last two people on the list that needed to know. For the most part, showing the remaining sonograms to the curious people was good enough, them accepting the two images as the truth, and everyone’s reactions to the news of a second daughter were positive ones. For a while, it seemed that the only person honestly unhappy about it was Lunabel, but that changed when they’d gotten around to tell Chrom (and Maribelle, but she was honestly excited about a second grandbaby, regardless of gender).

“So you’re not going to get to name a kid after his grandfathers, it seems,” Chrom said dejectedly as he looked at the two pictures, his eyes shifting between them as if he was looking for something to prove the determination wrong. “I’d been hoping, from the moment I found out about this, that you’d be able to do that, but…”

“Actually, uh, about that.” Not liking how upset his father sounded with the turn of events, Brady leaned down closer to the dining room table, looking up at his father with a smile. “We don’t have a full name yet, and who knows when we’ll have one, but we’ve asked Lucy to help us out on this one, comin’ up with some good girl name that works your name and Sev’s dad’s name into it.”

“You’re aware that agreement was only in effect for Lunabel, correct?” Maribelle asked, bouncing her granddaughter on her lap while the girl pushed her own cheeks up with her fists as she tried to make herself look happy despite the topic of conversation. “If you two wanted to name your second girl after someone else, perhaps a dear friend or sibling, it would be accepted and forgiven.”

“No, Ma, we’re makin’ sure it’s fair to all the grandparents this way.” Reaching towards where Severa was sitting, her head resting on her arms as had them folded on the table’s edge, Brady sat back up straight and pulled his chair in a bit closer to the table with his feet. “That’s why Lucy’s involved, between her and Laurent they know a million names and a million more alternate versions and they’ll come up with something, I know they will.”

“We just need a _first_ name,” Severa corrected, lifting her head as she disputed what Brady had been saying. “I know what her middle name’s going to be, it’s going to be just like Lunabel’s except with my father’s name. Easy as that.”

Simultaneously, both Chrom and Maribelle had comments to make. Sounding surprised at the gesture, Chrom asked, “So that means that her first name gets to be based on my name?” while Maribelle, jaw dropping at the revelation, said, “I don’t know if I can live my life knowing my grandchild has a criminal’s name as part of hers.”

“I don’t want to hear you talk about my dad like that, he’s more than just a criminal.” Replying quickly to part of Maribelle’s half of the conversation, Severa continued on to his both of their points with, “But yeah, we’re doing something crazy and stupid and naming her something sounding like Chrom, and then her middle name’s going to based on my dad’s name. So it’ll probably be just as big of a mess as Lunabel’s name is, but at least this time we’re not messing with prissy and pretentious names.”

“My name isn’t prissy or pretentious,” Maribelle said with a turn of her head that sent a few of her ringlets flying over her shoulder and into Lunabel’s face, making the girl cough as the taste of hair hit her mouth. “You’ve just been raised by less-than-noble people, that’s all.”

“I’d say a police officer with a family heirloom of a name is pretty noble.” Severa drew in a deep breath, exhaling as she rested her head back on her arms. “Too bad that I can’t give that name to both my kids, but the family’s got a rule. One person with the Cordelia name per generation, and I was the lucky one to get to use it for Lunabel.”

That was a new fact about Severa’s family that Brady hadn’t heard before, something he asked about as they were leaving his parents’ house that night. She explained it exactly as she had there at the house, that one person per generation in the family got the name and then it wasn’t used again until the following generation. “That’s a neat rule they’ve got there,” he said, seeing her smile out of the corner of his eye. “So, has there been anyone else in your family born in Luna’s generation or…?”

“Not that I know of, but do you know how much I actually care about my extended family? I know when they die and that’s it. Mother dearest keeps better tabs on everyone than I could care to, she knows that Luna was the first and therefore she could get the name, and that’s that.” Severa laughed, her smile getting bigger. “I still can’t believe it’s a rule that we can’t all just use the name, but thank the gods it is, because I’m rather content with the name I’ve got. Wouldn’t want my mother to have shoehorned her name into it.”

Brady figured that, by learning that information that day, he wasn’t ever going to have to grapple with it again for a very long time, if ever, but lo and behold, when the time came for them to get over to Severa’s parents’ house to tell them in person about their second child, it came roaring right back at them. It started when they pulled up to the house in their beat-up car and saw a vehicle that looked like it belonged in the ritzier neighborhood sitting in the driveway. “Say Sev, ya never mentioned that your parents had upgraded their car,” he remarked as he parked the car in front of the house and got out, getting Lunabel from the backseat before walking around to help Severa out as well. “When were ya going to tell me about that?”

“That’s not the kind of vehicle my mother would drive,” she replied, approaching the strange car with apprehension and investigating it. “Besides, it looks to be a rental car. Kind of fancy for a rental, but maybe their car’s in the shop and Daddy was the one to pick out the temporary replacement.” She leaned her face into one of the tinted windows, hoping to see anything inside for any more answers, but came back with no more leads. “I’ll have to ask them about it when we get inside. That’ll be a fun story, I bet.”

“Mama, Dada, can we not talk about sisters today?” Lunabel asked, burying her face into her father’s neck after she finished. “I don’t wanna do it.”

“Sorry, sweetie, but that’s kind of why we’re here today,” he told her, patting her back as she sighed, her breath warm against his neck. “I understand you’re over the whole sister thing, but this isn’t something that’s gonna change anytime soon. It’ll get better once you actually have your sister around to be with, I bet.”

“Or it’ll get worse, who knows?” Severa was already at the door, raising one hand to knock on it while she held the front edge of her shirt down with her other hand, trying to keep it from pulling up as she started knocking. “You know what I’d like, I’d like to not be having to do this either, I’m already sick and tired of being pregnant and I know the worst parts are all still coming.”

Watching how she was straining to keep her shirt down, Brady couldn’t help but give a soft laugh at the action. “Don’t you think they’d be nowhere near as bad if ya could manage to keep all the sweet stuff out of your mouth, so ya weren’t already worrying with how big you are?” Her knocking stopped as she turned to glare at him, tongue sticking out and metal piercing visible, which only made him laugh more; the laughter was interrupted, however, when the door opened and the person standing on the other side wasn’t either of her parents.

“When they said that you didn’t look quite like you did the last time we saw each other, I figured they meant something small, not something quite so—“ The person greeting them hadn’t even been able to finish his thought before Severa had turned back around, wound her arm back, and punched him squarely in the jaw, not hard enough to do any damage but certainly hard enough to have him stumble backward and rub at the bright red spot her fist had left. “What was that for, Severa? I was only going to say that you wear motherhood much different than I had assumed you would.”

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Spitting the words as she brought her arm back as if she was going to take another swing, Severa watched as the man in the doorway stepped back to get away from her, which she countered by coming closer. “Answer me, Subaki! What are you doing here?”

“I’m in town to partake in watching the festival happening downtown this summer, if you care so much to know that before asking anything else.” Even though he’d just been punched moments before, Subaki was smiling at Severa, before looking to the man standing behind her with the child in his arms. “And who do we have here? Could this be little Severa’s husband and daughter? I’ve heard a lot about you lately as I’ve been acquainting myself with the ins and outs of the area.”

“Er, yeah, that would be us,” Brady answered, not quite sure why he was dignifying this man with a response after Severa’s violent reaction to him. “Who are you?”

Subaki’s eyes went wide for a moment as he realized he’d gone with asking about someone else before properly introducing himself to the people who didn’t know him. “How could I be so foolish as to not let you know? My name, as Severa has already said, is Subaki, I happen to be a distant relative of hers.”

“Not just a distant relative, he’s my second cousin,” Severa clarified, still holding her fist as if she was ready to strike again. “And he’s not anyone we want to associate ourselves with, Brady. Let’s just go and come tell my parents the news some other time, I’m not dealing with him and his bullshit.”

“That sure would explain why you know what that phrase means, but why’re we going already? I haven’t even gotten to meet the guy.” Even though Severa seemed hell-bent on leaving right then, Brady stayed exactly where he had been going as far as to hold out a hand for Subaki to shake, after making sure he had Lunabel held tightly with his other arm. “My name’s Brady, in case no one’s told ya that, and this girl here’s named Lunabel.”

Squashing her face as much as she could as she looked at the man, Lunabel loudly said, “I don’t like him, like Mama! Put me _down_ Dada, I wanna go!”

“Well if she isn’t just like her mother, always wanting to get away whenever something she doesn’t like is around.” Not bothered slightly by the way the girl was reacting, Subaki took up the offer of a handshake, his grasp rather firm on Brady’s hand as they shook in greeting. “At any rate, it sure is nice to meet you. I’m surprised Severa hasn’t spoken of me before this, we used to be quite close despite living at great distances from each other.”

“And then I grew up and realized what kind of asshole you are, but we’re going to just pretend that never happened, aren’t we?” Severa was stepping away as fast as she could, hearing Lunabel repeat the demand to be set down to follow her getting ignored as often as it was being made. “My daughter, who’s never even met you, knows how much of a prick you are just with one conversation, you can drop the act you’re putting on and get back to your damn normal behavior.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand what’s got you so worked up right now, Severa,” Subaki admitted, ending his handshake as he pulled back to push the door open a bit further. “But if you want to leave, by all means you can. I think your husband and I will have quite a great time getting to know one another.”

Frustrated that she wasn’t winning the argument, Severa stopped her retreat and stormed back towards the man in the doorway, raising her fist to Subaki’s face once more. “Don’t sound so smug when you’re talking to me about the people I care about, jerk,” she threatened, shaking her fist at him. “I don’t know why you’re here or what you’re doing trying to play friendly, but we both know how the last time we interacted went down, don’t act like it happened any different.”

“I could never forget how it happened,” Subaki replied, gently pushing Severa’s hand away and earning himself a hard punch in the arm for touching her. “You managed to get drunk on free wine while underage at the family gathering before my wedding, then proceeded to be too hungover to come to the ceremony the following day.” He shook his head, tutting at her while she inched back from him, eyes wide as she realized how right he was. “So yes, I do remember the last time we interacted quite well, it involved me being a gentle soul and holding your hair back while you—“

“You don’t need to remind me of that part,” she said, defeat in her voice as she looked down, her stomach by far the most prominent thing she could see. “So maybe I’ve been mentally making mister perfect over here a monster in my head for no reason, but…” Her eyes tracked back up, hitting Subaki’s face right as he began beaming at her. “You’re still pretty low on the list of people in this family I can tolerate. I think I enjoy my mother more than you most days.”

“Acceptable, as you don’t see me as much as you see her.” Without giving her the chance to break into a rant about how much she despised her mother and how he shouldn’t have taken that as a compliment, he stepped aside to let her and Brady both walk in, closing the door behind them once they were all in the entryway. “Now, I believe your mother said something about preparing lunch for us all today, which is a lovely gesture on her behalf. Sometimes I wish I was that courteous as kind.”

“Yeah, she’s a real kind one,” Severa grumbled, looking at the pictures on the wall and seeing that, even though times had changed and relationships were much better than they had been, there were still a few pictures hanging there that had her cut out of them. “So kind that she’s tried erasing her daughter from her life a time or two, but we forget all about that because she loves making lunch for us when we visit, don’t we?”

His face going completely stone-cold, Subaki looked at Severa and shook his head. “You’re awfully ungrateful sometimes, I hope you realize. No wonder your mother seems to prefer me to you.”

He walked towards the kitchen before she responded, although said response was a lot of gaping and trying to put a voice to words that were coming out solely as breaths. “I’m takin’ it that you and him don’t exactly care for each other one bit,” Brady offered out as a starting point for Severa’s rage-fueled comments, but when he got a dramatic flip of a long ponytail and a lot of heavy stomping towards the kitchen in response, he sighed. “Maybe listenin’ to her about just leaving right away would’ve been for the best, don’t you think, Luna?”

“I think Mama’s not happy,” the girl replied, giggling as she did, before loudly gasping as an idea came to her. “She’s gonna hi-i-it ‘baki man again, right Dada?”

Grimacing at the idea of Severa taking physical action again, especially in the presence of a police officer, Brady replied, “I sure hope not, kiddo. We don’t need her gettin' in trouble just for not liking the guy.”

“Oh, but ‘baki man isn’t a good, Mama likes good and he is not good.” Lunabel pressed her face into her father’s shoulder, still giggling. “But okay, no hitting. Hitting is bad.”

“It is bad, definitely.” Now wishing that they hadn’t been present when Severa had done that initial punch, Brady moved a bit quicker towards the kitchen, half-expecting to see her wailing on Subaki once more when they got there. But everyone was already sitting at the table, the seats closest to the door still open for when he and Lunabel got there. The lone exception to the sitting rule was Cordelia, who was hovering behind an unamused Severa, her hands pressing firmly on the sides of her daughter’s stomach. “Oh gods, what did I miss by bein’ a bit late to comin’ in here?”

“You only missed Severa walking in, stating that she couldn’t handle the smell of the meal I’m making, and then blaming it on the baby, which she accidentally referred to as a girl in the process,” Cordelia explained, moving her hands around slightly. “And now I’m attempting to feel any sort of movement that my granddaughter might be making in there.”

It was obvious that Severa was not enjoying being touched like she was, based on how she was glancing around and glaring at everyone who made eye contact with her. “I’ve explained this to you a couple times now, Mother. She doesn’t move around much during the day, it’s always at night that she decides she’s going to be super active.”

“Yes, well, it’s always worth a shot.” Bringing her hands back and brushing them together before heading back to her stovetop, where a pot of something was boiling, Cordelia gave a content sigh once she was back to stirring whatever she was cooking. “I shouldn’t be so invested in this child, it being your second and whatnot, but seeing as you tended to exclude me before Lunabel was born, this is a nice change of pace.”

“She excluded you in such a happy time in her life? What kind of horrible child does that to their parent?” Subaki, leaning back in his chair, caught the glare that Severa was shooting him for that comment, leading him to laugh. “I only say that because I could never imagine having done such a thing to my parents before my daughter was born, they were there for every step of that journey.”

“Why couldn’t you have ended up more like Subaki, hm?” Cordelia asked, pursing her lips together as she turned to look at Severa, who was still glaring at him with no desire to stop being so nasty towards him, even when Brady was sitting next to her and trying to calm her by having a firm hand on her leg. “It would have made things so much more enjoyable for everyone involved.”

Across the table, only half-listening to what was being said, Gaius caught enough of what was happening to snort in amusement. “Yeah, see, I don’t think any daughter of mine would’ve been able to be raised to be respectful and good like this guy here. Wouldn’t want her any other way, though.”

“Can we stop talking about me for a moment and say something about how he casually dropped that he’s got a kid and no one batted an eyelash at it?” Throwing her hands up in exasperation, Severa gestured towards Subaki with only her middle finger pointed at him on both hands. “Don’t tell me you were telling everyone about that and expected me to hear it from them. Just don’t.”

“I wasn’t planning on saying anything of that nature,” he replied, tilting his head just far enough that his perfectly-positioned clip of red hair cascaded to one side. “Your mother was immediately on the list to know when she was born, but aside from her, the only people who were members of the family who have the family name. Oddly enough, I wasn’t ever told who was preventing me from bestowing it upon my darling Caeldori, but…”

“Oh, no one told you after everything?” Cordelia asked, to which Subaki explained to her that they hadn’t, his own parents only telling him that they knew the name had been given to someone in his daughter’s generation already. “How odd. At any rate, let this be the day where you find out, as the recipient of the name happens to be in this very room.”

Now it was Subaki’s turn to glare, but his eyes never once had Severa as their target; he was looking straight at Lunabel, as she was reaching for the candy bowl in the center of the table. “I…see. I can definitely agree on how odd it is, seeing as it was not kept secret at all that Severa had been the first of us in our generation to have a child, but nothing had been said about said child’s name.” He whistled softly, drawing Lunabel’s attention away from the bowl and onto him. “Young child, would you mind telling me your name?”

She didn’t know it was a trap into admitting her unintentional guilt, so Lunabel was quick to give what had been requested. “Luna ‘delia,” she replied with a grin that seemed to take up her entire face with its radiance. “And you’re ‘baki man.”

“I am, yes,” he replied, fishing his phone out of his pocket so that he could show the girl something on it. “But this isn’t about me, this is about the lovely child you’ve kept a beautiful name from.” Once his phone was in hand, he turned its screen on, the lockscreen showing a picture of a little dark-haired girl that had to have been right around a year old, earning a grumble about babies from Lunabel as she looked at the picture. “That’s my dearest Caeldori, who will be around here for you to meet sometime this summer when the dance festival events draw closer to their beginning.”

“She’s a _baby_ ,” Lunabel said, her face scrunching in disgust. “Like a sister.”

“She’s also quite deserving of the name you have that she doesn’t,” he continued, not really caring that, of all the people he could be making this complaint to, the child it involved was the least likely to understand. “She’s a perfect image of what someone bearing the Cordelia name should be, unlike you.” As he gestured towards the woman still standing by the stove with one arm, he motioned towards the unimpressed facial expression and the messy pigtails the girl was wearing with the hand still holding the phone. “You must understand why I want my daughter to have the name so closely intertwined with perfection.”

Most certainly not understanding even slightly, Lunabel saw that the phone was close to her face and knocked into it with her head, putting an end to the conversation when she accidentally made him lock himself out of the device for a short period of time. There was still a lot of talking to be had between everyone there, a lot of it getting heated as it involved Severa interacting with people she wasn’t fond of, but when the afternoon melted into evening and they broke apart for the night, it ultimately wasn’t that bad of a time to look back on.

“When were ya going to tell me about that guy and how strange he is?” Brady asked Severa as they got back into their car to head home, her shrugging in response. “I mean, it would’ve saved a lot of awkwardness today if I’d know who the hell the guy was. Also would’ve made ya knowin’ how Luna’s related to Owain’s kids make a lot more sense.”

“If I could forget that Subaki exists, that would be the best thing ever. Why would I talk to you about him willingly?” That mindset didn’t stop her from spending the entire car ride home griping about how his every tiny motion had annoyed her more than she could properly express. By the time they were parking in their normal spot in front of their building, she was fuming because of how much she’d worked herself up, ready to just get back into the apartment and call it a night.

Somehow, she should have seen it coming that everything was going to get so much worse, especially when they got upstairs to their front door and found, attached to the middle of the door with a thick piece of tape, a notice for their eviction from the apartment due to a lack of paying rent. A notice relating to a noise disturbance, that would have made sense given the presence of a three-year-old who enjoyed throwing fits on occasion, but their rent _should_ have been being paid. Severa knew it should have been. That was the one thing that Brady’s money from his job should have been taking care of every month so that she could focus using her money on everything else they needed.

“Do…do you know what this is about?” she asked, her voice cracking as she was barely holding onto her composure. “Do I need to call the landlord telling him he’s made a mistake, or do you know what’s going on?”

In a split second, Brady went from trying to act like he was clueless to crying, setting Lunabel down on the ground so that he could drape himself over Severa while he cried. “I didn’t know I didn’t have enough to pay it this month, I swear,” he sobbed, her looking disgusted at him while he did. “It wouldn’t have been a problem if I’d just stuck with the one day a week think that’d been offered to me, I know it!”

“One day a—damn it Brady, what the fuck kind of fool do you think I am?” Shaking him off, she opened the door and, after making sure Lunabel had followed her in, slammed it on him before he had a chance to collect himself enough to follow as well, leaving him staring at the sheet of paper on the door that had been his undoing.

The one question on his mind, aside from how he was going to make this up to her: what had happened to him getting money from her father?


	5. Moves and Mistakes

“Ma, I don’t know if there’s any other way for me to ask this of ya, but do ya think we could come live at your place for a little while?” It had taken three days of trying to figure out what had gone wrong, three days to learn that the money Brady was supposed to have been given was being taken from a bank account Gaius should have had no access to and had been stopped from leaving the account, three days for it to really sink in that he’d only been working one day a week and had been hiding anywhere around town to cover his tracks, for anything to be done to remedy the situation. And the only remedy they could come up with was asking Maribelle if she could spare a room at her house for them while they tried to piece back together some semblance of their life.

She didn’t reply to him right away, listening in to his end of the call for any laughter that told her it was a joke he was playing on her. When the sniffles started, she was treated to Severa, unhappy as always, yanking the phone from his hand and saying into it, “Please, just let us stay with you. We’re not making the money we need to stay here any longer and we need somewhere to stay until your dumbass son gets a real job.”

“I would have considered helping you out, but then you threw an unnecessary curse at my precious Brady and now I just cannot bring myself to care about your problems.” Hanging up the call without a second’s remorse, Maribelle found herself being immediately called back, a call she ignored over and over again until she felt she’d gotten her point across. How was she going to be expected to help someone out who was so rude without justification? When she did answer a call, she intended on posing that question to Severa, but as it was Brady, crying his eyes out, who was talking to her, she was forced to loosen her stance and give them the help they needed after all.

Therefore, on her next day off, she spent the entire day helping them hastily move their things out of their apartment and back to her house, dictating how every little thing was done. “I think I can handle packing up my home on my own, thanks,” Severa ended up snapping at her after she’d tried getting involved in helping with a box or two in the bedroom. “I’ve lived here since I was sixteen, able to pay for it entirely by myself with what money I made at the same job I still have now. But I can’t pay for things when there’s three of us living here, and the person who should’ve paid for it didn’t do his share.”

“And you’re going to take his mistake out on me, his mother?” Sounded offended as she took a step backwards away from Severa, whose glare showed that she was a second from losing any and all composure and breaking into a screaming argument, Maribelle shook her head as she looked around the overfilled bedroom that was being packed up in a hurry. “Whatever, if you insist on not needing my help with this, I will gladly pack elsewhere.”

“I don’t need your help, nope.” Severa’s voice reinforced the idea that she was on the verge of losing her calm, so Maribelle took the opportunity to leave the room, finding Brady doing much of the same out in the living room, packing up box after box of things that were shoved everywhere.

He heard her enter and looked up from carefully stacking the toys he was packing, smiling at his mother when he saw it was her. “Thought ya were Sev for a second, and I was gonna tell her to get back to work,” he said, looking back down at what all he’d put in the box. “I just…don’t really wanna have to talk to her about this right now. It’s all my fault that we’re havin’ to pack up everything and move back in with ya, and I don’t think she’s happy about it at all.”

“Why would she be? She’s rightfully angry, as odd as it is for me to admit that.” Not caring that she could have been making herself of some use, Maribelle sat down on what little clear space there was on the couch, the sigh she made as she sat down enough to pull Lunabel from wherever she had been hiding to come sit with her grandmother. “You two had made a life for yourselves here, raising this beautiful child and starting to prepare for another, but you threw it away for whatever reason.”

“It’s the job thing, Ma. I told ya about it already, I got kicked out of my job because obviously I didn’t need money right now when Owain’s got two kids to feed.” Brady looked up from the box again, finding that Maribelle and Lunabel were both watching him. “What kind of uncle basically fires his nephew when he knows that nephew needs the money too?”

Maribelle shrugged, but made sure to cover Lunabel’s ears before she answered. “The same kind of boneheaded uncle that would keep an employee that doesn’t work rather than the one that does, I suppose. Oh how Lissa keeps coming to me with gripes about how her own son can’t work a day at that job without being a waste of money, but you know that they wouldn’t just offer Owain money out of their pockets. He has to earn it.”

“Why’d you cover Luna’s ears when you said that?” Brady’s eyebrows were raised as he watched his mother still hold her hands over the girl’s ears, despite there being no reason to. “She’s got Sev as a mother, she’s heard all sorts of things that aren’t quite friendly.”

“I didn’t feel it was appropriate for her to hear me speak ill of someone in her family, that’s all,” Maribelle replied, moving her hands and allowing for the girl to turn to face her and laugh, unaware of what was being discussed even with her right there. “But I’m sure she heard what I said anyway, or she’s heard it before. It’s not exactly a secret that there are some lackluster people in her family.”

“Then why bother with keepin’ secrets? Luna’s heard it all before, really.” He went back to organizing the box, not looking up when he heard his mother sigh at how he was blowing her off with his work. It took the front door to the apartment opening for him to jerk upright, nearly throwing himself backwards with how fast he righted himself. “W-what’re ya doin’ here right now, Lucy?” he asked the newcomer as he corrected his position, looking at his sister with just as much surprise as he’d had when he was asking about his daughter’s ears being covered. “Thought there was something going on at the school that ya didn’t wanna miss to come help out.”

Lucina gave a one-shouldered shrug, her other shoulder holding the strap of what looked to be a heavy bag. “It was important, but it’s nothing I haven’t seen before. You know how college kids can get when they visit campus for the first time,” she said, before remembering that the person she was addressing wouldn’t actually have known that fact. “Er, I mean, Laurent’s handling it right now and I’ll get back to it once I’m done here. This is just as, if not more, important than a freshman orientation could ever be.”’

“Hit us with it then, I guess.” Brady was eyeing the bag that Lucina was toting around, expecting her to drop it with how whatever it was holding was making the strap strain against her shoulder. “Just, uh, don’t actually hit us with it? What’s in the bag, Lucy? It’s not books, is it?”

Laughing, Lucina nodded, opening the top flap of the bag to show that it was completely filled with books of varying sizes. She pulled the top one out and Brady looked at the cover, feeling like he’d seen it before at some point. “I was already out retrieving these when I realized I needed to stop by here to talk to you and Severa and Mother, I suppose.” That was when she gave a small nod to Maribelle, who was looking just as confused at her appearance as Brady had when she walked in. “Funny how going on a wild goose chase for wherever the parenting books from Laurent’s mother’s library went led me to standing right here, but it happened for a reason.”

“Just get to the point, I’m not really sure what’s goin’ on here anymore,” Brady admitted, having finally recognized the book to be one he and Severa had been given to borrow back before Lunabel had been born. “You’re sayin’ you went out to collect those books, which is great, I bet whoever was borrowin’ them had a great time learning all that stuff, but what does that have to do with us here? We don’t need them.”

Sticking her head out of the bedroom doorway, having heard Lucina’s laughter from before, Severa looked completely unamused as she saw her friend and sister-in-law standing in the living room. “Oh come on, you’re here too? When’s your dad going to walk in and make it a real family party?”

“Hush, Severa, you knew I was coming over the moment it dawned on me that I could.” The smirk she gave the orange-haired woman was enough to shut her up and to get her to walk out into the living room to join the rest of them. As she situated herself on the couch unwillingly, pushing things out of her way to build a wall between herself and Maribelle, Lucina put the book back in her bag as she dug through the others inside of it, pulling out a piece of paper that was covered in notations and scribble-marks. “I think I’ve come up with a perfect name for the baby, believe it or not.”

“You’re interrupting our packing for this, really?” Looking down at the box at his feet, Brady would have said more if he hadn’t nearly found himself being kicked by Severa, the only thing stopping it from happening the fact that she couldn’t get her foot to reach him from where she was sitting. “And you’re okay with this, Sev?”

“She’s been holding this so-called ‘perfect’ name over my head all day, I’m more than okay with this.” Severa leaned as far forward as she could, eagerly looking to Lucina as she waited for what was to come. “Get on with it so we can get back to our packing, but tell us what you’ve come up with. This baby needs a name, damn it.”

“Yes, well…” Flipping her paper over, Lucina gave a gasp of excitement as she read one of her own notes, laughing to herself as she went from reading to looking at the four people in the room. “I’m sure that no one’s as excited about this as the expectant mother is, but it’s quite a wonderful name I’ve come up with and—“

“Oh, it’s for the _sister_ ,” Lunabel said with a groan, burying her face into Maribelle’s shoulder. “I don’t wanna get a sister.”

“—I think once Lunabel hears what I have to say, she might change her mind on that.” Before anyone could tell Lucina that there was no changing Lunabel’s mind regarding her disgust when it came to getting a sister, she was continuing on with her explanation. “It came to me after days of casual name-hunting, where I took what I knew I needed and tried to find something that pieced it together with something functional. That, well, didn’t really work, because no names including Father’s name really seemed like they’d fit.”

“You’re blabberin’ about nothing right now, Lucy,” Brady warned her, looking towards Severa and seeing how eager she still seemed to be. “But whatever, I guess, I think I might be in the minority on not bein’ excited about how you’re goin’ about this.”

Lucina scrunched her nose at her brother’s negativity before returning to reading off her paper and explaining the process by which she’d created the name. “I went to lay down after another fruitless day of name-hunting and working in the library when it hit me that I was going about everything the completely wrong way. Why find something already including Father’s name, when I could build the name from the ground up? And why not start with a nickname that the girl could have?”

“I cannot believe that my own daughter would take the time to create a name based on a _nickname_ for it,” Maribelle interrupted, her mouth slightly open as she looked offended at the idea. “What happened to having full names to be proud of?”

“She _will_ have one, if they go for this name,” Lucina clarified, holding a finger up to silence her mother, “because the nickname only works if Lunabel does indeed change her mind about hating her sister. Why else would they want matching nicknames for the girls?”

“Matching…nicknames?” Leaning back where she sat, Severa was already trying to imagine the outcome of that decision, before shrugging it off. “Well, I mean, I guess I can see it working out. Might make yelling for them a bitch, but it would be cute.”

“Yes, exactly!” Lucina looked like she was about to jump in her excitement, liking how her idea was already being received by one of the people that mattered (and while she was sure her brother was still looking like he wanted no part of the conversation she knew he was on board with whatever Severa wanted). “So, with that in mind, I started building any kind of nickname that would match with Luna, and came up with Lena. As in, shortened form of Selena, as in a reference to the moon, as in the same as Luna’s name.”

Now nodding along as if she was understanding everything that was being said, Severa smiled brightly at Lucina, not sure if she was supposed to be expecting more to that thought or not. “I can dig all that, whatever it all really means. So what’s the actual name, you haven’t come up with a reference to your all-important father yet.”

That was when Lucina’s mouth opened wordlessly, her words disappearing from her before she could say them. She looked at the paper in her hand, closing her eyes and breathing in a few times with the tiniest of smiles on her face as she did. Eventually, with all eyes on her, she brought herself to speak: “You have to believe in me on this one, but what about Chelena? As in, a hard ‘ch’ sound like Father’s name has, but able to be shortened to…oh, you get the point, I already explained first it like a moron.”

The first sound to come from someone wasn’t a word, but rather a surprised grunt that found Severa leaning back over, one of her arms wrapped around her stomach as her face contorted in pain. “Gods damn it, you mention one name and the little demon starts kicking as if she’s being summoned. You’re two for two on coming up with names these girls respond to, I hope you know.”

It was a compliment that Lucina wasn’t going to reject, and while there was a bit of conversation about how this meant that, through the power of one suggestion, this child had been named, the gravity of the whole situation was weighing down heavily on Brady. He couldn’t find himself getting involved in the talk about the name and how it was so great for the child or anything like that, as all he could think about was how they should have been packing up because of his failure as a parent to keep paying for the roof over their heads. It was already bothering him enough, but to have another name to keep in mind for someone that he’d failed…

He might have started crying the moment Lucina left to head back to the school or the library or wherever she’d been heading. He might have left where his mother and wife were both still sitting, talking somewhat respectfully thanks to what good news Lucina had brought them, just to go lock himself in the bathroom to cry. Big, ugly tears rolled down his cheeks as he stared at himself in the mirror, his hands not able to move quickly enough to keep the tears from collecting at his jaw, dripping down onto his shirt and making him feel even more helpless than he already had. “Dada, please lemme in,” he heard Lunabel saying on the other side of the door, her little fingers sticking in under the door. “Mama and Mamaw-belle are saying icky sister things. Che…eena? things.”

Despite being choked up and a complete wreck, Brady still found it within him to correct the girl. “Chelena things,” he told her, hearing Lunabel loudly groan at the name, “and they’re why I’m in here right now. Go find a toy to complain at, right now I’m not sure I’m the one you want to do that to.”

“But Dada, I wanna be with you.” Lunabel’s statement sounded genuine and pure, much like he knew the girl herself to be, and it was almost enough to get him to open the door for her. Catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror once more as he reached to unlock the handle made him rethink the decision; he knew he was a weak man but he’d always tried to act so strong around his daughter, her seeing him cry like this over something that she’d take as being solely about his sister wouldn’t do anything helpful to the situation.

When she started whimpering on the other side of the door because he was too busy fighting with himself to let her in, he only managed to make himself feel worse. Now he’d started making her upset just because he was upset, and that was no way to handle the situation. To prevent her from crying he unlocked and pushed the door open a tiny amount, Lunabel giving an excited noise when she saw that it was opening for her. She scrambled to her feet as her father opened it more, so that she could run in and grab onto his legs, wiping her face against him. “Is that why ya want to be with me, Luna?” he asked her, watching as her rubbing motion stopped and she just kept her cheek pressed against his leg, giving him the chance to reach down and place his hand on her head, her blue hair clinging to his skin like static. “Just so ya could dry your tears on me?”

“N-no, Dada,” she replied, before breaking into girlish giggles, giving away that she had been caught in her lie. He sighed, shaking his head while she stood there giggling, his sighing making her quickly hush herself. “I don’t wanna get a sister,” she quietly said, not even trying to look up at her father while she spoke. “I don’t wanna get a Che-eena.”

Having to hear Lunabel butcher the name again made Brady’s heart ache more than it already had due to everything currently happening. At least before, he could get on without having to put a name to the other child, but now he had to remember that she was real, she had a name, and she was just another person he’d managed to let down with what he’d done. “I know you don’t want a sister, but sometimes that’s just how it goes,” he eventually managed to tell her, lifting his hand from her head so she could look up at him with a scowl that rivaled any dirty look her mother could throw around. “Just like havin’ to pack up and move away, that’s just how it goes too. But it’ll all be okay, you’ll love Chelena when you meet her and…it’ll all be fine. It will.”

Lunabel’s scowl turned into a pout, one that she held for several seconds before letting go of her father’s leg and storming away, stomping her feet down as hard as she could. “I’m not gonna like Che-eena, nope! I don’t wanna get a sister!”

“Oh great, she’s yelling about that again,” he could hear Severa loudly saying, as if she was trying to get him to respond to her, but the only thing on his mind at that moment was what kind of mess he was in and how he could try to fix it. “It would be _great_ if someone with a sister would ever get around to telling her how it’s not bad or whatever, but I bet he’s too busy feeling sorry for himself to care.”

As he heard her and his mother both start laughing at what she’d said, he slumped against the counter and sighed. This was all his fault, every bit of it, and he wasn’t going to be able to get over it until he fixed things to some extent, but the question of the hour was how would he manage to fix anything? Keeping himself locked in the bathroom and away from everyone else was not how to do it, that was for certain, and so even though he didn’t want to go out to face his wife or his mother he went out to the living room and right back to the packing he’d been doing, ignoring their words until they got the hint that he wasn’t interested in talking to them.

By the end of the following day, the apartment was emptied out and cleaned as nicely as it was going to get after so many years of being lived in, and everything was moved over to the upper floor of Chrom and Maribelle’s house. Everything that wasn’t essential or necessary had been thrown into what had once been Lucina’s bedroom for storage, while everything they would need or want for as long as they were living there had been forced into Brady’s old bedroom, a room that made him hate what had happened so much more. He’d gotten married to get out of living in this place, why was it that he’d let himself sink so low to have to come back to it?

“It’s nice to have you back under our roof,” Chrom said to his son after he’d finished getting all their extra boxes and furniture stored safely in the other bedroom. “Never thought it would happen once you left like you did, but things change and so do circumstances. We’ll let you stay here as long as you need.”

“Which hopefully won’t be too long,” Maribelle added, pushing herself in between Chrom and Brady where they stood at the top of the stairs, excitedly looking at her son once the two men had accepted that she wasn’t going to budge. “We’ll be spending as much time as possible getting you settled into a new job that will hopefully cover the cost of getting you somewhere else to live. I don’t know how long I can last having, ahem, a certain wife of yours living in my house.”

From inside the bedroom, Severa could be heard snapping back about how she wasn’t exactly thrilled to have to be living there either, which only made Maribelle cover her mouth to hide the sickly sweet and completely fake grin on her lips. “Yeah, uh, I don’t know if I want to have to go through this whole moving thing again for a while,” Brady admitted, averting his eyes so his mother couldn’t lock hers with his. “Do ya know how hard it was to get Luna to actually not be in the way when movin’ everything? It was really hard, Ma.”

“Having moved before with young children underfoot, I suppose I can understand your reasoning, but I don’t want you relying on us for shelter forever.” Dropping her hand, Maribelle was now straight-lipped as she looked at Brady, noticing that he was still trying to avoid eye contact with her. “Brady, my dear, you know that I love you and will support you no matter what, but perhaps we could go downstairs to discuss things a bit…?”

Brady tensed up, not sure what his mother could want to talk to him about but expecting the worst if he allowed it. She was always quick to start being negative about Severa, so what was going to stop her if they went down and started talking, aside from the fear that she’d come down and hear it; however, Maribelle never seemed to shy away from making her negative opinions about Severa known to everyone, so there might not have been a problem there after all. “I think I know what this is about,” Chrom said, stepping to the side and gesturing for the other two to take to the stairs. “I’ll stay up here, possibly spend some time playing with Lunabel if she ever decides she’s going to be friendly, and you two can have your conversation.”

“You’re welcome to join us if you want, love. After all, it is your sister’s husband’s fault this has all happened, I think you’re more qualified to speak on his behalf than I am.” With a wink in Chrom’s direction, Maribelle was grabbing Brady’s arm and trying to drag her son that was easily twice her size down the stairs with her, him only following because he didn’t want her to accidentally pull him hard enough to make one or both of them fall down the curved staircase. Once they were downstairs and ducking into the kitchen, not even taking chairs at the dining table as normal family conversations happened, she let go of his arm and sighed, turning her back to him. “This isn’t about Severa, nor do I want it to be anything about her,” she told him, bringing relief she couldn’t see to his face. “It’s about you and how you’re going to take care of her.”

“I thought ya said it wasn’t going to be about her,” Brady replied, his mother turning on her toes to face him with exasperation in her eyes. That was how he realized that it might not have been a conversation about Severa, but it definitely was going to involve her. “Er, I mean, I just don’t know how I’m gonna take care of her at this point. Workin’ at the car shop was great, it was good money and decent hours, but then that had to be taken away from me and I’m not doin’ the ‘one day a week’ thing there anymore.”

Maribelle nodded, understanding what her son’s dilemma was but trying to come up with some way to fix it. “Perhaps you could look into finding a position with the talents you have? You have applicable hands-on skills when it comes to repairing vehicles after several years at the shop, don’t you?”

“I don’t know if I’d word it that way, all I really ever did was wash parts because Uncle Vaike didn’t want me messin’ up someone’s car if I tried puttin’ things back together.” Brady scratched at the side of his face, realizing that maybe the job he’d been so fond of really wasn’t that great of a job after all, especially since his mother was going pale at the news that he hadn’t done much work at all. “But I’ve got a great work ethic, if that’s any help. I’d always stay late and come early if I was asked. That’s gotta be useful somehow.”

“Somehow, sure, but if you don’t have the actual work skills to fall back on, we’re going to have to approach this differently.” Tapping her fingers against her chin as she ran through different options, a light went on in her head and her eyes widened. “Maybe you could get a position at the restaurant Severa works at, that wouldn’t be the best source of income but it would be a start.”

He grimaced at the idea of working alongside his wife (or, at least, her co-workers). “Yeah, but it’d also be dependent on how people like me and I, uh, am not exactly the most likable guy around. People are kinda intimidated by me and my face.”

“That might pose a problem at making any money, I understand.” Her fingers were still tapping as she tried coming up with something else to suggest, but there was very little out there that Maribelle knew her son to be capable of handling. Another idea came to her, one that caused her to squeak in excitement, but the worried look that Brady gave her for that reaction was enough to make her hesitate on telling him. “I know how much you’ve reveled in not being forced down this path ever since you got that ‘job’ you no longer have, but perhaps we could find you a position somewhere in town that needs a violinist?”

The worry on Brady’s face turned into a look of simply not wanting anything to do with what had been suggested. “I haven’t played the violin in years, Ma. Old thing’s probably out of tune and I’d have to re-teach myself how to play, and again, I’m intimidatin’ to look at and people aren’t gonna want a violin guy who scares everyone around him.”

“You’re fantastic with children, though, and I’m sure I could find many people who’d be interested in giving their children violin lessons from a seasoned violinist like yourself.” Maribelle’s mouth opened into a big smile as she further explained, “There’s plenty of judges and legal officials I work alongside who would give you the money you’d ask for if you offered to tutor their kids on the violin. You could start your own business if you so wanted, with me behind you every step of the way, and with the money you’d make with this you’d be able to support Severa and your children comfortably.”

“But Ma, I’m not that great of a violinist! Sure, I played in church with ya for all those years, but outside of that I’m really not great at all.” He didn’t want to mention that he had no desire to ever pick up the instrument again, but he figured that telling his mother he didn’t want to go through with her idea was going to be enough heartbreak for one day. “There’s gotta be some other option for me to work with here.”

Maribelle let her shoulders slump a bit as she accepted the defeat on the topic. “All right, I won’t start building a client list for your tutoring services, but the fact remains that you desperately need a job in order to fill your role as a decent husband and father.” She looked him over as she thought about any other options, shaking her head when all she did was draw a blank. “You might have to do things the old-fashioned way, going around and seeing who is in need of help and whatnot. Downtown might be a good place to start, with all the traffic in town for that dance festival or whatever it is. Those businesses may need more help than they already have.”

Having going downtown suggested to him brought an idea to Brady’s mind, but it had nothing to do with a potential job search—even though he promised his mother that the next time he was down there it would be for that reason. She believed him, trusting that he was going to do the right thing, but when the time came a few days later for him to embark on his so-called job hunt, he never made it into any store that would possibly be hiring, nor did he even try to find anywhere that he could think of working.

He found himself in the front lobby of a packed dance studio, standing around the door to the practice room that had people in all sorts of elaborate costumes pushing in and out of it. Every step he took closer to the door, someone would shove him back to where he’d initially been standing, leaving him in a constant battle of just trying to get into the room where he knew his friend would be. Talking to Inigo wasn’t anything close to searching around for a job, but it definitely would have been something less stressful if he was able to do it.

 _If_ was the key word there, as never once while getting close to the door did Brady stop to realize that none of the performers there looked like the ones that were typically around when Inigo was in. In fact, most of them seemed to be women, when the vast majority of the performers every other time he’d come by as of late had been men; the thought that maybe he wasn’t there didn’t even cross his mind until he saw a familiar pink-haired woman come out of the practice room, the performers parting to open a path for her as she left. “Uh, why’s miss Inigo’s mom here?” he asked himself as he watched her walk by. “Wonder if something happened to him, maybe that’s why he’s not here…”

She made it to the front door, the path closing up behind her as the performers all swarmed to get close to her as she gave them some sort of message, a loud cheer erupting before everyone filed outside and away from the studio. As the room cleared out, Brady figured that he should take the cue from them and leave as well, but when he saw the woman approaching him, her head tilted as she looked him over, he knew his chance was gone. “I suppose you’re here to see Inigo?” Olivia asked with her soft voice, watching as Brady nodded, hints of confusion in his eyes as he looked down at her. “He’s not here today, I’m afraid. The troupe he’s been participating in this week had a performance somewhere in town, so I used the studio as a meeting place for some of the other dancers.”

“That makes sense, I guess,” he replied, seeing her face darken as she glanced around the trashed interior of the studio. “Say, uh, I know I’m just a friend of Inigo’s and all that, but I bet he’d want me offerin’ this since I’m here. Want me to help ya clean this place up? I’ve got nothin’ else to do today.”

She was unable to tell that he was lying through his teeth as he made his offer, making her acceptance of what he’d said bad for him if he’d ever intended on doing what he was supposed to have been out on the town for. “I’d love to get some help, sometimes it can take hours for us to tidy back up after everyone rearranges everything. I’ll even reward you somehow for the gesture, if you’re okay with that.”

“There’s no need for a reward, it’s just me helpin’ a friend’s mom out.” He had to restrain his eagerness to accept that reward, but the last thing he wanted was for Olivia to think of him as desperate for any kind of handout. She didn’t seem to catch on, which was fine as she was already moving into explaining how they should start cleaning up. A couple hours later and he was walking home without having talked to his friend and without any leads on jobs, but he had a little bit of spending money he hadn’t had when he left home that morning.

It was spending money he couldn’t use on anyone but himself, something that left him feeling guilty, but he’d done some kind of work to earn it, even if it wasn’t the kind of work his family was expecting from him. It was a small step in the right direction, or so he felt.

* * *

Ever since that surprise return to town, it had been nearly a weekly thing for Kjelle to stroll into the restaurant on days where both Severa and Cynthia were working, chatting with them and distracting them from their work with her presence. Due to certain things that had happened between them, it didn’t start out as a positive situation for Severa, because every time she’d see Kjelle waiting for her at her table, she’d think back to how she’d gotten a tad handsy upon their reuniting, but as she watched Cynthia comfortably talk with her, she gave in to the fact that it must have just been an accident and completely unintentional.

After all, if she had meant what she’d done, it would have made sense for her to have tried again, but they hadn’t so much as shook hands since then because of the aversion Severa had developed to getting to close to her. But Kjelle had never been one for respecting people’s boundaries like that, she had always been known for getting physical if she wasn’t getting her way, so the whole groping thing really had to have been an accident simply because she hadn’t tried it again. With that in mind, she slowly sank back into a friendly relationship with her, finding herself spending more and more time talking with her as she sat around with the express purpose of taking the ladies’ time away from work.

As time went on and the comfort she felt around Kjelle grew back to levels it had been at before she’d left town, Severa found herself wishing that she could spend more time with her than the little amounts of time they had there at the restaurant. “Ooh, idea,” Cynthia told her when she brought this up before their shift one day, while she was anxiously looking towards the door as if she was expecting Kjelle to come in right after opening. “How about the three of us go do something together after work today? I’m sure she’s free, and you can always just have someone watch Luna for a bit longer so you can come with.”

“Sounds great except, uh, what kind of anything would we be able to go do?” Pulling her eyes from the door to look at Cynthia, Severa shook her head as she watched her friend’s face fall as she was at a loss for words. “Kjelle’s into the whole ‘looking for women and doing athletic shit’ scene, which neither of us are into or really able to do. What, are we going to accompany her on a bar crawl during the day, get hit on by a bunch of creepy dudes, have to drag her gay ass out of there when she starts throwing punches at ladies who reject her?”

“No, I don’t want to go into any bars, but…” Cynthia’s eyes widened as she clapped her hands together, having come up with something to suggest while mulling over what Severa had suggested. “I’m pretty sure there’s a dance event happening downtown today, maybe we could catch the tail end, or even the second performance, of it! Does that sound fun to you? It sounds fun to me, honestly!”

Severa sighed, hanging her head as she raised a hand to rub at her temples. “Because the one thing I want to do right now is try and shove myself into some crowded theater to watch people do things I could only dream of. I mean, I’m pretty sure you could hook us up with good seats or whatever, so maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, but…eh, what the hell, let’s see if Kjelle will go along with it.” She dropped her hand and looked back up to see Cynthia already pulling out her phone to try and arrange something for them. “Or you can just go ahead and do it now, that works too.”

“I don’t want us to lose out on decent tickets because I wait until the last minute to ask Inigo nicely to help us out,” she explained, her fingers flying as she typed her message into her phone. “He’ll hook us up, and even if Kjelle doesn’t want to go, doesn’t mean me and you still can’t make a day of it.”

“Oh yeah, because going on a friend date where neither of us can defend ourselves from the creeps and weirdos that’ll be hanging around the theater is such a great idea.” Rolling her eyes, Severa watched Cynthia’s face fall as she realized how true those words were, one of her hands letting go of her phone to reach down and rest it on the side of her stomach. “Either Kjelle goes to defend us, or I don’t go at all. That’s that.”

“Then I guess we’ll just have to hope she wants to go, won’t we?” Sounding disheartened as she asked her question, Cynthia’s eyes shifted from focusing on her phone down to where she’d put her hand, sighing as she wiggled her fingers a bit. “I don’t think I want to go without her either, I’d hate if someone started getting rude with me and I couldn’t even fight back because I wouldn’t want to get hurt.”

“Yeah, you’ve got to think about what’s not just good for you, but good for your kid as well.” Turning to head through the restaurant for one last inspection before they opened and it was time to get to work, Severa took a few steps away before stopping in her tracks, spinning right back to see Cynthia still standing like a statue in her original position. “Say, if we do go out for all this today, promise we’ll actually talk about _your_ kid for a change. Maybe if strangers catch us talking about your baby they’ll stop badgering me about mine.”

She went back to walking away, but it didn’t prevent her from hearing Cynthia call out at her, “Not my fault that you look like you’re going to pop at any moment, which makes it totally impossible to tell that I’m actually, somehow, more pregnant than you are.”

Hearing that wasn’t anything Severa had wanted, and she was sure that Cynthia was already regretting those words, but the damage had been done and the reminder that it was far easier to strike up conversation with her about babies than it was with her friend stuck with her for most of the shift. She’d overhear customers who’d come in making comments about it to themselves, never asking her outright if she should still be working at that point, but she’d never hear them talking about Cynthia in the same ways. It was infuriating but completely justified just by looking at them, something she never wanted to dwell on too long.

Until Kjelle came in and brought it right to the forefront of discussion, anyway. “Surprised to see you still wobbling around this place,” she said with a laugh as she took her seat, Severa hovering by the table’s edge with a scowl on her face as she heard the comment. “What, can’t be too much longer before you’re a liability to be around here, huh?”

“I still have time to be here making money, don’t you worry,” she replied, spitting her words but trying not to sound as angry as she felt. She was supposed to ask about going on a girls’ outing, she needed to get into a jovial mindset before bringing that up. “Give it a couple weeks, pretty sure you’ll walk in here one day to see me ‘wobbling’ around and Cynthia long gone, because, well, you know why.”

“Do I know why?” Kjelle laughed as she lifted her menu up in front of her to block her eyes from seeing Severa’s scowl deepen. “Just joking, I’ve heard it plenty of times from her about how you’re acting as her cover or whatever. You’re a damn fine cover for her, might I add.”

Despite scowling as hard as she was, Severa could feel one of the corners of her mouth trying to tick upwards into a smirk at what she’d just heard. “Why thanks, glad to know that my inner drunk slut managed to get something right that night. Bet she’d be glad to hear it…if it didn’t mean, uh,” she raised an arm to cough into the crook of her elbow as she muffledly finished with, “having to be a pregnant cow again.”

“Mind repeating that last part?” Lowering the menu and un-obscuring her face, Kjelle raised her eyebrows at Severa, who was rapidly shaking her head as she tried playing off what she’d said as nothing. “No, I know what I heard you say, and I just want you to know that you wear being pregnant rather well, compared to some of the ladies I’ve seen.”

“You’re acting like you’ve seen more than a couple,” Severa said in surprise, stopping her headshaking so that she could focus on the expression on Kjelle’s face. It was one that involved her mouth twisting to the side as her eyes tracked up towards the ceiling, almost as if she was trying to underplay how many she had seen. “Come on, now you’ve got to tell me what you mean here.”

In a reversal of what had happened before, now it was Kjelle’s turn to shake her head and try to play coy with what was going on. “All I’m saying is that some people lose all personality and become frumpy women when they’re expecting a baby, and you’ve definitely not lost your sass, even with everything else going on. Don’t question me further on it.”

“Whatever you say, I guess.” There was a sense to what Kjelle had said that made Severa feel like she wasn’t getting told remotely close to the entire story, but then she remembered that this was the same woman who had bolted from town when she got the chance just to look for a girlfriend in other places. Not everything was going to make sense when it came to her. “Anyway, now that we’re done hounding me about how I look, let’s get to getting your order taken and then I’ve got a question for you of my own.”

“Wherever it is you want to take me, I’m game. I’ve got the car today so I can drive wherever’s needed to have some fun.” She’d answered the question much earlier than Severa had expected her to, and without actually being given the question itself, something that she was quick to explain: “Cynthia already messaged me asking if I would want to hang out with you two today. I told her I wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to be with my friends before they’re both stuck toting babies around, so there you go.”

“Makes…sense,” Severa admitted, before shaking her head and repeating, “but let’s get your order taken so I can actually be back to working, got it?”

With a laugh, Kjelle complied with the demand, allowing for Severa to head back to the kitchen to get her meal started, but when she got there she found Cynthia standing with her back to the entryway, wiping at her eyes. She could have either taken the time to ask her friend what was going on, or she could have done what she was supposed to be doing; both weren’t possible at once, and with how much time she’d spent talking to Kjelle there (even though it had been a few minutes), making it look like she was working hard was top priority at the moment.

After the order was rang in, she had every intention of asking Cynthia what was going on, but the brown-haired woman had disappeared from where she’d been standing in the time it had taken to get one order in. “Where could she have gone?” she asked herself, looking around the kitchen and what parts of the dining room she could see for any sign of her friend, coming up completely empty-handed. She didn’t have the time to go on a full-restaurant search for her at the moment, so it had to be left there in order to go check on tables and make sure she was still doing her job decently enough.

It wasn’t until they were both getting off the clock for the day that she was able to ask what had happened, Cynthia sniffling when the question was raised to her. “I-I got told today that it’s in my best interest to start thinking about taking time off from work,” she explained, sounding heartbroken at the idea, “and I really don’t want to yet. I love working, I love being here and making money, and I said that! I told the managers I don’t want to leave but they said I’m getting to be too much of a problem with how scatterbrained I can get sometimes and how many trays I’ve dropped and—“

“But you haven’t forgotten any orders or dropped any trays in a few days, I don’t get what their problem is.” Severa held out an arm for Cynthia to lean into, a proper hug rather impossble for the two of them to have together. “It’ll all be fine, whatever they make you do. It’s not like they’re firing you, they just want you to take time off to focus on the baby and not working so much.”

“B-but it’s like they’re firing me.” Sniffling again, Cynthia looked to Severa with eyes beginning to brim with tears. “I told them that, I told them all about how I don’t think I’m going to come back after I have the baby and that I don’t want to be forced out of here because I’m just trying my hardest!”

“Okay, clearly your hardest isn’t good enough for them, so maybe you should take their advice and just stop working now? I mean, not everyone can handle working until they’re weeks away from giving birth and that’s okay.” The smile Severa gave Cynthia was supposed to be reassuring that everything was fine, but it came off as being smug about herself being able to stay working for longer, something that began the cascade of tears down Cynthia’s cheeks. “Oh no, please don’t cry, that’s not what I meant, I…I don’t know what else I can say here, but I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

She babbled a few things through her tears, most of which were negative comments at herself and her own physical capabilities, but one of her thoughts was enough to get Severa to step back and rethink everything she held dearly. “I just, as long as I don’t have a baby to be caring for, I want to be putting in the work to support myself. I am my own support, I don’t need to rely on Inigo for everything right now!”

“You don’t…oh, I have an idea. If I suggest this completely _stupid_ idea, will you stop crying and realize that it’s not all so bad?” Severa couldn’t believe she was even considering saying what words were on the tip of her tongue, but when she saw Cynthia’s face light up a bit at the idea of something being said that would make her feel better, she knew it was worth it somehow. “Okay, uh, what if we both just stop working, then? It’s in the best interest for you, yeah, but you know what’s in it for me? Getting my dumb husband to actually get a job, that’s what.”

She hadn’t expected Cynthia to latch onto the idea like she did, but judging by how she started laughing and smiling despite her tears, it was obvious that she was completely okay with that arrangement. It wasn’t something that Severa really wanted to do right then, she was rather fond of getting out of the house for work, especially now that they were living in the house of one of her least-favorite people in existence, but if it made her friend happy, that was one small positive to it all. “I think I’ll go tell the managers that I’m okay with leaving here in the next couple of weeks if it’s what they really want, but if they tell me that’s fine you totally have to tell them you’re leaving too here soon.” Cynthia waggled a finger towards Severa. “I’m not getting put on the outs here just because you lied to me.”

There went any chance of her actually going back on that word. “Yeah, you got it,” she said, giving a thumbs-up as she spoke, before looking towards the dining room. “I’m going to get on out of here, me and Kjelle can ride downtown together and you can meet us there when you’re done here. Sound like a plan?”

“Sure does. I’ll meet you there, if you see Inigo before I get there tell him what happened to make me be late, will you?” The agreement was made and so, as Cynthia went back to the office to talk with management once more, Severa clocked herself out for the day and strolled over to Kjelle’s table, slamming her hands on the edge of the table to catch the attention of the woman sitting there, too focused on her phone to have noticed who’d been approaching her.

“Gods, how could I have missed you walking this way?” she playfully asked, standing up and draping an arm over Severa’s shoulders, a gesture that was thrown off the moment Severa was standing at full height. “You’re not exactly graceful now that you’re throwing around all that extra weight, so even with me on my phone I still should’ve heard you coming.”

“Please, don’t talk about me like that, I really don’t want to hear it.” A wave of self-consciousness overtaking her, Severa tried to push herself to get away from Kjelle, but she was fully aware that even at her most rushed walking, Kjelle was going to be able to keep up with her effortlessly. It was still worth a shot, which led to her making a break for the door and not only being caught up to within steps, but passed and having the front door held open for her by the very person she was trying to get away from. Sarcastically, she commented, “Great, you’ve learned how to be polite to people, what ever will I do about this?”

“I have an idea, you’ll get in my car and ride downtown with me like friends do,” Kjelle replied, catching every bit of Severa’s sarcasm and ignoring it. “I bet Cynthia’s driving herself, isn’t she?” Answering that would involve explaining the entire conversation they’d had in the kitchen, so Severa merely nodded in response. “Sounds great, I’ve been itching to get some time with just us, and here it is, falling right into our laps.”

“Maybe I’ll just wait for her to head down before I go, I’m not liking the sound of what you’re saying.” It was an empty threat, even if she’d wanted to wait around she didn’t want to seem like she was causing drama where none was needed. The ride downtown wasn’t eventful, the sound of the radio drowning out any conversation that could have started because every time Kjelle opened her mouth, Severa turned the music up on her a bit more, prompting her to stop trying to talk after a few attempts.

Once they’d found a parking spot and were walking the couple blocks to the pavilion doubling as a dance theater for the summer’s events, that was when the conversation managed to get started, although it wasn’t about anything Severa expected it would be. “Hey, look at that lady over there,” Kjelle said, grabbing Severa’s arm to point it in the direction of a woman who was visibly pregnant resting against a wall. “Bet you we could go over to talk to her and she’d never guess that you’re apparently nowhere near giving birth.”

“Why are you _like_ this?” Severa asked, yanking her arm back and trying not to look in that woman’s direction for more than a split second. “I get it, I’m really bad for having babies and I blow up gigantic when I have them, what’s your damn obsession with pointing that out?”

Not expecting any answer at all, she was going to be content with just getting Kjelle to possibly back off on the entire topic, but when she heard a throat-clearing cough she knew she was getting something. “It’s just something I notice when I’m looking around at ladies, about how they get to have kids and be happy with them, but it’s not like I’m ever going to submit myself to that torture so I’d want a girlfriend who, uh, knows what it’s like and lets me have her kid as my own.” Kjelle was scratching at the back of her head as she spoke, sounding a bit like she’d admitted some great sin or something. “It’s why I’ve known so many pregnant ladies, a lot of my potential girlfriends were…okay, you know what, this is just awkward for me to be talking to you about.”

“And it’s awkward for me to be hearing.” Inching away slowly from Kjelle while they walked, Severa was mentally telling herself that she’d been wrong to consider that groping incident an accident, especially now that she knew what she knew. “I was your first girlfriend, and now we’re back to being friends, and if I wasn’t your type before I clearly am now, and this is just a huge ball of bizarre I want no part of.”

“Then let’s drop the topic like we never approached it.” Sighing, Kjelle looked to Severa and saw her apprehension to being anywhere close to her, which only made her sigh again. “Look, I know that our past history isn’t exactly the most positive thing to look back on with what I just said, but last time we hooked up, you were just dating the guy. I’m not wrecking your marriage just to end up with a kid that’s mine in name only.”

“Thanks for that assurance, I suppose.” It wasn’t much, but it was enough to get Severa to step back closer to her friend. “You’re right, though, we should just act like we never approached this topic. It’s incredibly gross and weird and I get that people have their kinks but that’s just wrong.”

A third sigh left Kjelle’s lips as she tilted her head back and faced the summer sky overhead. “It’s not a kink, I just explained what my goal is. I want a girlfriend who can bring a kid into my life without me having to do any of the dirty work.”

“Good luck on finding one of those, don’t think you’ll get one around—hold on a second. That’s why you left town, isn’t it?” Severa was looking towards Kjelle, who was still facing the sky, both of them having stopped walking. “You didn’t want any of us knowing that’s what you were about so you left to find someone somewhere else. That’s real sneaky of you, I hope you know.”

“That’s not exactly why I left, but it’s a part of it, sure.” Her head tilting back down, Kjelle inspected the crowds of people around them on the somewhat-busy downtown sidewalk and gave a _hmph_ that was immediately followed by her grabbing Severa’s arm again and pointing down the street with it. “I know my mother’s workplace is down this street a ways, could you imagine what would happen if she found out I was trying to steal hearts and kids from people? She’d murder me on the spot, because if she could suck up her pride to have me, I could get over my disdain of guys to have a kid of my own too.”

Tugging her arm back once more, and rubbing at where she’d been grabbed, Severa rolled her eyes at Kjelle’s line of thinking. “Or you could just live your life the way you want, let things happen naturally, all that kind of stuff,” she said, trying to steer them away from their odd topic they couldn’t let go of. “Having kids is pretty overrated anyway, even if you couldn’t tell I think that based on my life.”

“Yeah, you’re right. What a dumb thing to be dwelling on where people are probably listening to us, anyway.” As she chuckled at the situation, Kjelle was still looking around, trying to find something else to point out by using Severa’s arm, but when she came up with nothing she shrugged it off. “Let’s get to the theater, I bet Cynthia’s already caught up with us even though we’ve been distracted. We’re not going to let her beat us, are we?”

“No way, Cynthia’s always the slow one getting places, not going to let her beat us this one time.” With the desire to beat her friend to their meeting place burning within her, Severa was the one to grab Kjelle’s arm, unable to really pull her along because of the sheer amount of resistance Kjelle could give when someone attempted to drag her. “Come…on, we’re going now, that means move those feet and get on it!”

Blinking as she looked down to her feet, which she had firmly planted in one spot, before looking up to the focused expression Severa had on her face as she tried pulling her, Kjelle broke into a huge smile. “I didn’t think you’d actually slip back into bossing me around, figured that mean bitch you used to be disappeared somewhere in the mess of getting married and having babies.”

“I’m not even being a bitch, you said we’re not going to let her beat us and then you refused to move. I have every right to be trying to move you myself.” Giving up on pulling her, Severa got behind Kjelle and started trying to push her instead, her hands sliding down her back until they were resting right above the top of her pants. “Why are you being so stubborn? We need to get moving!”

With a happy sigh, Kjelle stepped forward a few inches, then a bit more, until she was actually walking with Severa’s hands still on her back. That lasted for a moment, until Severa became aware of the spectacle she was causing, and then it was straight to walking like normal people, acting like what had happened hadn’t actually happened at all. Upon reaching the theater’s exterior, they stopped moving again, this time because the previous dance session was letting out and they weren’t going to push through the crowd just to be denied entry because they didn’t actually have tickets on them.

“Now we wait, I suppose,” Kjelle said, propping her elbow on Severa’s shoulder and leaning against her slightly, her head resting on her hand. “Maybe we’ll see some cute girls walk out and be able to talk about them. Or maybe we’ll see something interesting that we both can get behind.”

“What common interests do we even have?” Severa asked, before someone coming out of the theater caught her attention. Kjelle might have answered her with something, but she was too busy watching the person leave the entryway and trying to listen in on their conversation to have heard any answer. Under her breath, she muttered, “I bet damn Subaki’s around here somewhere if _she’s_ here…”

Hearing that Severa was talking to herself, Kjelle leaned off of her and looked at her with concern. “Is something wrong? Do you not like when you’ve got a muscular woman posing against you?”

“It’s nothing to do with you,” she replied, having heard the questions. “It’s my dumb cousin and his wife. I’m pretty sure that’s his wife over there—“ she waved towards a young-looking woman with long, dark hair that fell loosely behind her, “—and if it is, that means my cousin’s bound to be around here. Er, second cousin, but that distinction doesn’t matter here, he’s an ass no matter what the relation.”

“Are you sure that could be here? I mean, she looks kind of…young.” As she watched Severa nod, firm in her beliefs as to who that woman was, Kjelle shrugged before stretching her shoulder and wrapping an arm around Severa, a gesture that was allowed to last for a matter of moments before she pushed her off. “Okay, guess your cousin’s either super young himself, or he’s into younger girls. If that’s even the woman.”

“I can’t tell if it is or not, and I’m not going to bother finding out.” Severa closed her eyes and tried to clear her mind of the sight of that woman, but when she reopened her eyes she was still staring directly at her. “Ugh, of course we’d come down here just to find someone I might know.”

Behind them, a woman could be heard loudly saying, “What a waste of our time, coming all this way for some lousy dancing by guys we can see at home anyway! Guys who have all fallen sucker to me but still pushed me away, at that! Why couldn’t we see any of the heartthrob men this country’s known for while we’re here?” Her words were enough of a distraction to get both Kjelle and Severa to turn around to look at the culprit, a woman with curly blonde hair and a seemingly-permanent expression of disgust on her face—until she saw the ladies looking at her anyway. Her entire demeanor changed when she realized she had an audience, and she gave the two a wave. “He-hello there! I’m talking to, uh, a friend here! Look!” She grabbed towards the first person next to her, another displeased-looking woman, although this one seemed more bored than anything. “Weren’t we talking about the lovely dance we saw?”

“If by ‘talking’ you mean I was listening to you complain, then yes,” the other woman said, her eyes focusing on someone behind the two who had turned around. Severa was beginning to suspect this woman’s attention was on the same person hers had been before the interruption, but then she suddenly jerked away and brushed past the two, nearly hitting Kjelle on the way. “I have a job to do now, goodbye.”

“So much for talking to her,” the blonde woman groaned, shrinking back now that she was alone against two strangers. “I’m a good person, whatever you heard me say was just me venting or being upset or something like that, I promise I didn’t mean any harm.”

“You go back to looking at that so-called wife,” Kjelle whispered to Severa, who was more than happy to take the offer, “because I’m going to keep my eye on this lady here.”

“Sounds like a plan to me.” Severa looked back to where she had thought she’d seen Subaki’s wife, but the only person she saw now was the displeased-woman who’d gone past them, standing and talking with a light-haired woman who was munching on a bag of popcorn she must have gotten from inside. “Hm, guess I can’t spy on her anymore, but maybe snooping on them’ll be a good way to pass the time.”

She was just about to get closer to them to hear their conversation when the theater doors opened and both women stood at attention, their focus having gone from each other to whoever was coming outside. Severa’s eyes followed where they were looking, to find a familiar man standing arm-in-arm with two unfamiliar women, one looking like she was some kind of exotic performer in her nearly-nude costume, and the other looking incredibly excited to be so close to someone who was putting the entire dance festival thing together.

Her mouth opened to call out at him to let him know they were there, but when she saw the smaller of the two women get up on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek, all words she had planned to use were lost. And when Inigo returned the favor, rage built within Severa, almost as if she’d just watched someone cheat on someone dear to her.

That was because, as she was quick to assure herself, she just had.


	6. Sticky Relationships

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter took nearly two months to write and post, due to a lot of reasons, but we're back in business, folks!

Her rage bubbling to the point that containing it was not an option, Severa waited until she saw the kiss end before she made her move, storming over to the trio by the door as fast as she could, her hands curled into fists that she was struggling to keep at her sides. “What was that?” she asked, her voice snapping Inigo’s attention straight to her, as he hadn’t noticed her approaching him. His mouth fell open slightly as he tried to come up with words to use for his explanation, the two ladies at his arms both looking to him rather than the disruption standing in front of them. “Can’t explain yourself, can you? _Gawds_ , you’re in so much trouble once Cynthia gets here and—“

“Trouble? Cynthia?” Even with his jaw still dropped in shock at being approached like he had, Inigo was able to give a laugh at the idea Severa had just thrown out. “She’s aware of what my day job during this festival is, she won’t be bothered at all with whatever it is you think you saw.”

“What I think I saw? I watched you and this…this…” One of those fists uncurled as Severa waved her hand in the direction of the small blonde woman still clinging to one of Inigo’s arms, her trying to come up with some way to describe her in her anger. “This bitch, I watched you and her kissing, not on stage or anything to even try and ‘excuse’ it. And you think your wife’s going to be okay with that?”

“It wasn’t a romantic kiss,” the woman said, looking at Severa with wide eyes that looked scared at what her actions had caused. “It’s all part of the act of our characters in this one performance, I didn’t mean anything by it and neither did he!”

“Hush now, Elise, there’s no reason for you to defend yourself against a bully like Severa. I’ll handle her.” Shaking the blonde off of his arm, her running around him to attach herself to the other woman that was also being shaken off, he motioned for them to both step away while he did as he said and handled the accusations being thrown at him. “You really think I would ruin what I have with Cynthia, with a foreign dancer I’ve only known for a short while? How desperate do you think I am?”

“Obviously very if you’re here macking on someone you don’t actually know,” Severa bluntly replied. “What’s the problem with Cynthia, huh? What’s made it so you’re not satisfied with her anymore?” She was being shushed by Inigo as she was starting to cause a scene that he didn’t want to deal with, but in her anger she wasn’t going to heed his attempt to get her to back down. “Is it because she’s not as pretty as she used to be? Huh? Is that it? You manage to knock a girl up and then you cheat on her because you’re not digging her anymore while she’s carrying your child. What a prick.”

“That’s not how any of this is!” he cut in, reaching towards her and acting as if he was about to grab her face to cover her mouth to muffle her screaming. “You have read this entire situation completely wrong, and I would appreciate it if you would just shut up on this matter! I am not, and have no intentions of ever, cheating on my dear Cynthia!”

Seeing his hand moving precariously closer and closer to her mouth, Severa stepped back a bit and brought her still-curled fist up to shake in front of him. “I don’t believe a word you’re saying right now, because I saw you kissing her with my own two eyes! I’m not hallucinating a damn thing right now, you were so kissing someone who isn’t your wife and acting like it’s not a big deal at all!”

“Because it isn’t a big deal! Elise has always greeted me with, and given me at times of great emotion, small cheek kisses, and I have always returned the favor. It’s nothing romantic, and if you weren’t being so dense you would understand that!” Frustrated, and embarrassed that this had happened where people who were there for his shows could see the whole argument, Inigo shook his head and added, “If you’re going to continue this tirade, do it somewhere where we can speak in private about it. This conversation does not leave this area until we’ve both settled the facts.”

“That’s how a cheater handles being caught, asshole,” she spat, watching him roll his eyes and turn away, having given up on dealing with her right there. She wasn’t going to let him leave without throwing more words at him, though. “I’m going to run your name through the mud over this! Hear me, the _mud_! You’re going to get those divorce papers so fast, you’ll—mmph!” While he hadn’t had it within himself to shut her up by muffling her voice, someone else had the idea to do so, catching her by surprise until she had her head tilted back just enough to find herself looking into Kjelle’s face, the redhead smiling at her.

“I don’t know what you were going on about there, but I figured I should shut you up before you end up getting the cops called on your ass. I’d hate to see your mother get down here to arrest her daughter.” Suppressing a laugh, Kjelle let go of Severa’s mouth just long enough to let Severa get riled back up and start continuing her yelled thoughts, so the hand went right back over. “And now we’re done here. Seriously, what the hell happened while I was, ahem, distracted with something?”

Since her mouth was covered, Severa couldn’t explain anything, but due to how she’d acted when the hand had been lifted the first time, Kjelle wasn’t going to risk her starting up yelling once again. “Eh, it’s not that important right now. You can explain it to me once we’re alone somewhere later, hm?” That made Severa start shaking her head, the anger in her eyes dissipating as she tried to get the suggestion tossed aside. “No, you’re not getting out of explaining this one, and based on who you were yelling at I don’t think we want to do this anywhere near here. Why, what if—“

“Oh, hey you two!” Cynthia chirped, cutting Kjelle off mid-sentence and making her thank her lucky stars she hadn’t gotten much further into what she was saying. “Sorry for taking so long, you wouldn’t believe all the weird stuff I had to go through before I could get here. So, what’s going on? Why’s Severa being held hostage like that?”

“N-no reason,” Kjelle lied, letting go of Severa’s mouth again and hoping that she wouldn’t start yelling. When she remained silent, a tiny sigh escaped her mouth before she continued trying to play off what was going on. “Just having fun like girls do. Severa’s had to hold me back a few times with all the pretty ladies around, so I finally got back at her when she wanted to choke a bitch out for messing with me. Isn’t that right?”

She nudged Severa in the arm, hoping to get her to play along, but Severa was too busy looking at Cynthia, her eyes flickering from her friend’s happy face down to her swollen stomach, moving back and forth as she thought about what she should do. “Er, yeah, that’s so what was happening. You know me, always ready to defend a friend.”

“You really shouldn’t be so willing to jump into fights right now, you know.” Shaking her head, Cynthia gave a soft laugh. “I’d hate to have shown up to see you laying on the ground because whoever you fought with hit you where it would hurt most. That wouldn’t be cool at all, no way.” As her laughter subsided, she caught herself following Severa’s gaze, watching her friend keep looking her over. “Is something wrong with me?” she asked, causing Severa to rapidly shake her head to try and deter any suspicion. “Huh, okay. You must just be really excited to see me now, if you’re looking at me like you are.”

“We can call it that, yeah.” Swallowing down any words that would contradict the ones she just said, Severa gave a small nod. “Just making sure you’re looking fine before we go in and…you know, see whatever show we’re seeing.”

Gleefully, Cynthia clasped her hands together. “Yeah! Say, did you manage to run into Inigo before I got here, or do we need to go find him?”

Severa’s mouth opened for her to explain what had happened in the best way she could, but she didn’t have the chance to get out a single word before Kjelle loudly said, “Nope, didn’t see him at all. He must’ve stayed inside the whole time. Why don’t you go on in and look for him, and pop back out when you’re ready for us to join you?”

“I guess that works…” Cynthia’s hands fell to her sides, before she did a quick look at the groups of people surrounding where they stood, giggling when she saw the kind of crowd the theater had attracted. “I’ll let you two stay out here for a bit, finding Inigo shouldn’t be too hard when he’s probably already looking for me. Just don’t get into any more fights with people, will you?”

Her last words were pointed at Severa, who rolled her eyes as she heard them. The very moment that Cynthia was out of earshot, though, she was grabbing onto Kjelle’s shoulders and trying to pull their faces close enough together so that she could shoot dagger eyes directly into hers. “Why wouldn’t you let me come out and say what we’d seen?” she spat out, eyes narrowing as she spoke. “I don’t think lying to Cynthia’s the best idea, it’ll break her heart when the news comes out.”

“I just don’t think it’s our place to be breaking that to her, whatever it really was you saw,” Kjelle told her, before giving a small laugh. “Besides, getting her to leave us alone’s got you all close to me like this, and I’m never going to pass up a moment where you’re staring in my eyes like you are.”

“Ugh, it’s always flirting with you, isn’t it?” Severa threw her hands off of Kjelle’s shoulders and took a step back, watching Kjelle casually shrug at the accusation. “What is even wrong with you, thinking it’s cool to keep flirting with me despite knowing I’m married! I don’t need you acting like this!”

Shrugging again, Kjelle asked, “So what are you going to do about it? Run away from me? I’d like to see you try that, if that’s what you’re going for.”

The teasing wasn’t doing any wonders for the already-sour mood Severa was in, and she was going to make sure that her lack of appreciation was known. “No, I’m not going to run away from you! I’m going to—I’ll just—gah! Why is it that everything I can think of, you’re probably somehow turned on by?”

“It comes with the role of being the token not-straight one. Someone’s got to have the long list of supposed kinks everyone uses against them. Might just have to be me.” Kjelle reached out to lovingly stroke Severa’s hair, as a gesture of kindness, but when she was smacked away before she got anywhere close, she knew she’d struck a deep nerve. “Hey now, why’re you being like this? You’ve known I’m attracted to you, why would that have ever changed?”

Rather than justifying her with a response, and Severa definitely had responses she could have given, she turned around and headed towards the entrance of the theater they were at. She made it a few steps before she heard Kjelle coming up behind her, repeating her question once more. “I’m still not answering you,” she said, hoping it was enough to get left alone. “My reasons don’t need to be said to you, or to anyone.”

“I think I understand what you’re getting at with this ‘playing coy’ thing you’ve got going on.” Nodding as if she was thinking of something interesting, Kjelle continued with, “And guess what? You don’t need to worry if you think I’ll judge you if you came out and said that you think I’d no longer be attracted to you because of something. You can unleash your deepest worries out on me and I’ll take ‘em like a strong, supportive woman.”

Breathing in deeply, Severa contemplated taking the bait for a moment before deciding that no, it wasn’t worth her time or energy. “I’m going to go find Cynthia and hope she’s managed to chew the fuck out of her cheating husband,” she said, holding an arm out long enough for Kjelle to come up to it, so that she could bend it and jab her friend in the stomach, leaving her doubling over from the hit as she went inside.

“I…should’ve seen that one coming, honestly,” she remarked, as she heard the whispers of the other people gathered around the entrance, all commenting on what they’d just witnessed. “Severa is not going to play nice this time, is she?”

* * *

Surprising herself by being able to keep what she’d seen secret from everyone who hadn’t been present, Severa let the news of the cheating stay in the back of her mind, something that always became present once more when she’d see Cynthia or Inigo at the restaurant. She made it a point to hold her tongue on the issue when it was Cynthia she was dealing with, but whenever she could get a moment alone with Inigo she would spitefully ask him, “Have you managed to come clean to her about your cheating, bastard?”

His response never changed, no matter how many times she asked. “As there is nothing to ‘come clean’ about, I haven’t done a single thing. You’re finding far too much enjoyment in holding something that doesn’t exist over my head, and it’ll be a shame when we don’t have this regular contact anymore.”

“Whatever, you cheater,” she’d tell him, before walking away to try and collect herself and get his smug face and insistence that he hadn’t done anything wrong out of her memory. She knew what she’d seen, she knew that he’d been kissing that girl, and if he hadn’t been doing it, why was it that no one saw him out with any of the other performers anymore? Every time she’d hear someone talk about going to see one of his performances, if he came out of the theater afterwards he would come out alone or in the presence of males. It was a perfect cover-up for his cheating, and she was the only one who knew it. Well, her and Kjelle knew it, but she hadn’t spoken to Kjelle since that day and she wasn’t going to go try and drag her into this unless she volunteered herself for it (not out of not wanting her involved, but rather out of respect for letting her make her own decision to get involved). That was another issue entirely, however, and at its core it had nothing to do with the insistence that nothing had happened that afternoon outside of the theater.

The back-and-forth between Inigo and Severa had a definite end date for it, because, as Inigo would allude to every time it happened, there was going to be a time when they wouldn’t have the opportunity. Per the wishes of the restaurant management, despite there still being plenty of time before her due date, Cynthia was going to be stopping working, and once she was done that meant that there wasn’t any reason for Inigo to be coming around anymore. The only potential reason would be to, naturally, come visit with the friend still working there, but as she had promised Cynthia the day her being benched from working had initially been brought up, Severa was going to just go ahead and stop working as well.

There were two flaws in her plan to do that, the first one being that she hadn’t bothered talking to the managers about it. She was intending on walking out alongside Cynthia on her last shift and never look back, but she knew that if they called her asking her to come back in or reminding her of when her next shift was, she’d be too tempted by the money to stick with being done working. That tied into the second flaw, which was the fact that Brady still hadn’t bothered to find himself a new job, and therefore if neither of them was working they would be entirely reliant on his parents’ money. She was definitely okay with playing the role of a burden on Maribelle’s finances, but she was sure that Brady wasn’t, even though he was the one who _should_ have had a job at this point.

That one really wasn’t her problem to worry with, she decided after giving it some more thought, and so all she needed to focus on was how she was going to approach quitting the job she’d had for so long without an ounce of regret. The smart way to handle it would be to discuss the intentions with the managers and give them a good amount of warning, but Severa wasn’t one to be that kind when she never expected to come back into the place after her final shift. Why should she have to worry about not burning bridges, when she wasn’t planning on needing to rely on them for anything after this? Besides, she was fairly certain they would hear her mention that she was leaving and not coming back and they would argue with her that she was still plenty capable of working and that she should stay for as long as possible to help them out.

If they were going to put someone on the outs because of her faulty memory and higher tendency to drop things being amplified due to being pregnant, yet not bat an eye at someone who was quite literally taking twice as long to get things done because of her size, they needed the reminder that both of them were (as far as everyone had been told) just as far along. And if Cynthia was having to stop working, that meant that Severa was going to stop herself as well, even if she was doing it half to be a good friend and half because it meant she got to put pressure on her husband to do something about work.

“So this is it, right?” she asked Cynthia on the supposed last day of work, her friend looking visibly nervous as she glanced around the section of the restaurant she’d been assigned. “You’re done after today, and that means no more working for the both of us, yeah?”

“I don’t know why you think it’s both of us, I know they’ve got you scheduled to be here tomorrow morning.” A hint of sadness in her voice as she spoke, it sounded almost as if Cynthia was about to cry about being ousted from her job like she was, until Severa gave a non-committal noise in response to what she’d said. Her tone changed completely as she loudly asked, “You’re not planning on coming in tomorrow, are you?”

Severa shrugged, knowing that her verbal answer was going to be much different from the one in her mind. “Maybe, maybe not. All depends on how sappy they get about this being your last day here. They do know that you’re not coming back to work ever again, don’t they? Bet they’ll be thrilled to learn that if they don’t.”

“They know already, I promise you that they do.” There was a moment of silence as Cynthia looked around the section again, counting every table silently as she made sure to commit her exact allotment of tables to memory. When she was done, she looked to Severa was shining eyes, trying her hardest to keep her composure. “Do you think they’re going to miss me—or us, I suppose, if you’re serious about leaving—when we’re gone?”

“You still worked here when I was out of work when I had Luna, you can tell me just how much they missed me when I was gone.” Severa already knew the answer to the question of how much she’d been missed then, that being that they didn’t miss her much at all. The management’s way of handling her absence had been to hire someone else to fill her shoes, so that when she came back she was getting half the hours and working alongside someone rather new to the job. She’d persevered and outlasted that new hire, getting all her hours back eventually, but that might have been because she made life hell for that inexperienced server. So, when Cynthia didn’t give a response to the question, she sagely nodded and said, “That’s what I thought. They’ll replace us in a week and never think about us again.”

“That’s…not what I wanted to hear, but okay.” Sniffling, Cynthia turned to head to the kitchen, Severa following alongside her. “We’re going to make the most of this last day, and then we’re going to leave and never be remembered again. And that’s okay! There are better places for us to be right now, like me being at the theater to support Inigo, or you being at home watching Luna!” If she hadn’t been focused on walking, she would have seen the disgusted face on Severa’s face at mention of Inigo, but she was none the wiser to what her friend was unhappy with. “It’ll all work out with us not being here, and in a couple months when we have ittle babies to drag around everywhere we’ll just not come in here to show anyone them, because why should we? They don’t care about us!”

“’Ittle babies’…you’re still not bothering to say what your kid is. Seriously, here I was thinking that you talking about the damn thing after birth would make you just kind of casually tell me what you’re having, but nope!” Laughing, Severa stopped walking just in time to see Cynthia also stop and forcefully turn to look at her friend behind her. She stopped the laughter when she saw the distress in Cynthia’s eyes, however. “Er, did I say something wrong there? Can’t blame me for being curious about what you’re having. Either way, it’s going to be a fun time for you.”

“You don’t know how much I want to tell you, but I promised I wouldn’t tell a soul until the shower, and that’s not for a few more weeks…” That would explain why she looked distressed at the conversation, with her track record of being unable to keep secrets. “You’re right though, either boy or girl they’ll be a great baby to raise. And they’ll get to be best friends with your little girl!”

Wincing slightly at the idea, Severa forced a smile upon her lips to at least look happy about the idea. “They sure will be, I bet Chelena will love having a best friend already picked out for her.” Her words hopefully didn’t sound as fake as her smile had to have looked, because she didn’t want Cynthia to question what she was getting at. In her mind, she was cursing at herself for not taking that opportunity to make some snide remark that would have been a dig at why she wasn’t thrilled with their idea of their kids being best friends like they were: that being, naturally, that this child was fathered by a cheater who might just pass down that unfaithful gene to his unborn baby. Severa didn’t want her little girl finding out what being betrayed felt like by someone meant to be super close to her, and if it were possible to pass down cheating through genetics this kid would be a prime candidate for inheriting it.

“Have I mentioned that I love that name you have for her?” Cynthia asked, trying to steer the conversation away from the gender of her own child towards something already made public. “It’s so cute, just like every single one of the names on the lists Lucina built for us. Do you think she should become a professional baby-namer or something, because she’s really good at it!”

“Yeah, if only Lucina didn’t have a million other important things she was doing with her life. I’m sure professional baby-namer is way up there on her ‘dream career’ list. Right behind photographer for every event possible, I’m sure.” Severa’s smile became more genuine as she stifled laughter behind her teeth, not wanting to get wrapped up too much in Cynthia’s distraction. “But yes, you’ve mentioned how much you love Chelena’s name, many times now. Bet I’d do the same, if I knew what your kid’s name started with.”

Giggling, Cynthia shook her head and waggled a finger in Severa’s face, something she did not appreciate. “I already told you, not right now! Sheesh, you need to learn a thing or two about being patient! I can’t ruin the surprise!”

If there was meant to be more to their conversation, it was rudely cut off by a manager barking for both of them to get to work, but Severa was fairly certain she was done with talking with Cynthia after that. The temptation to rat Inigo out never faded when they were in conversation, and the less time she had to spent repressing thoughts about that event the better. At least, that’s what she told herself, but when she ended up walking up to a table a couple hours later with a face that she immediately wanted to punch in beaming at her at it, she regretted choosing work over Cynthia. “What are _you_ doing here?” she growled, staying a few steps away from the table in case the person in question wanted to try touching her. “My mom’s kindness finally not enough for you so you had to get away?”

“Quite the opposite, actually. She shall be meeting me here for lunch in a little while, after she gets off her shift for the day.” Motioning towards the empty seat across from him, Subaki’s smile faded as he saw how furious Severa seemed to be facing him. “What, is that not the answer you were looking for? Surely you aren’t surprised that we chose here of all places, simply because we figured you would be in!”

“And you couldn’t come in tomorrow when I wouldn’t be?” she asked under her breath, before shaking her head and trying to play it off as if she wasn’t angry to see him there. “Okay, whatever, you’re lucky that I need the money because if I had the choice to refuse to serve you, I would.”

Subaki cast his eyes down at the table, tracing the pattern on it with a finger as he contemplated his response. “I merely came inside and sat in the section of my dearest second cousin, why am I being threatened for such a kind action? I may need to speak with a manager after the meal if you keep this up.” As he was making his threat, despite it being utterly meaningless to Severa, he was glancing back up at her, a smug smile crossing his face. “Besides, you just mentioned needing money, and bullying your customers is no way to earn it. I would have figured you would have learned that by now, seeing as you’ve been working here since before my wedding, and that was years ago.”

“Why don’t you just shut it and tell me what you want to drink while you’re waiting for Mother dearest to show up and make my day that much worse?” Severa asked him, after miming for him to close his mouth with one hand. He obliged with her request, giving her what he wanted so that she could go get things started, only for her to be greeted with another unwanted face when she came back to the table with his glass, as well as preemptive one for her mother, in hand.

“Hello, Severa,” Cordelia greeted with a nod, looking past her daughter despite addressing her. While the drinks were being set down on the table, she continued talking as if she was actively partaking in a conversation with someone she wasn’t making eye contact with. “I must say, coming in here to see you still working is an amazing feat. You must be so tired, surely you’d rather be sitting down and resting your legs…”

“She’s already told me she’s in it for the money and the money alone,” Subaki informed her, before Severa could get a snarky word in on the subject. “I think that’s fair, as we’ll be sitting here taking up a place where she could be serving others.”

Sighing, Severa stepped back from the table once more and did exactly as her mother was still doing to her: looked past the person she was intending on speaking to while addressing them. “Now that that’s settled, you just flag me down or whatever when you’re ready to order, because I’m not wasting my time getting sucked into your conversation.”

She was able to get away from the table and back to the kitchen without incident, although she was certain she heard her mother making some observation about how she moved as she walked, but she wasn’t going to let that bother her. She wasn’t going to let anything about that bother her! This was her last day there, she was going to let everything roll off her shoulders and forget about it as soon as she clocked out. There wasn’t a single thing that was going to be allowed to ruin her day, unless by some stroke of bad luck the host at the door sat someone coming in to visit Cynthia in her section by mistake.

Who she found out in her section when she headed out with a tray of food for one of her other tables might have been just as bad as Inigo being seated in her section. Of all the people to come in on her last day, Subaki coming in made sense because he was a horrible person who lived to make her suffer. But for Kjelle, her dear friend, to come in as well? It was almost like they knew it was her last day! She couldn’t say anything right away, due to having that tray in her hands, but the moment she was finished delivering that food she was headed right to Kjelle’s table, to see what was going on.

“You are _not_ going to believe what I saw earlier today,” Kjelle said before Severa was even close enough to hear her without her having to get loud, which meant that several other restaurant patrons were able to hear that much of her announcement. “Remember that time we went to the theater and you got uppity about Cynthia’s man kissing that lady, or whatever it was that went down?”

“You’re not about to tell me you saw it happen again, are you?” Wary of this news, but feeling the rage building up inside of her once more, Severa drew the chair across from Kjelle’s and sat in it to hear the story. When Kjelle nodded, almost eagerly, she gasped, although not honestly surprised. “What a cheating bastard! We need to break the news to Cynthia, because clearly he hasn’t done it himself. She’s still super in love with him and doesn’t realize a single thing’s wrong.”

“Hey now, it’s not our place to be outing the man like that. As far as we know, he’s told her and she’s chill with it. I mean, with how blatant he is about kissing that girl, why wouldn’t he have told her?” Kjelle raised a good point, but it wasn’t one that Severa was going to believe right away, something she made clear when she seemed taken aback at the point that had been made. “You’re not going to jump in and ruin our friend’s happiness, are you?”

Taking a second to think about what it would mean to do such a thing, Severa shook her head, a long sigh escaping her mouth. “No, I’m not going to, Cynthia doesn’t deserve that, even though she doesn’t deserve being married to a cheater either.”

“I think she’ll realize what’s up soon enough, if she hasn’t already.” Leaning back in her chair, Kjelle lifted the front legs up off the ground but kept herself balanced thanks to her foot being firmly on the floor in front of her. “Hard to believe that she got suckered into a bad situation like that, with how much she insisted on waiting to get married until she was sure she had the perfect guy in front of her. Why’d she pick him?”

That was a question Severa could answer in a short form or a long form, and she debated the pros and cons of each one for a second. Rehashing the entire story as to how that marriage ended up happening would be good for some digs at Inigo, but it wasn’t really necessary at that given moment. “She fell in love, I guess. Happens to the best of us. I mean, look at me, I fell in love with, and got married to, someone that’s proven to be a real great guy. Can’t hold a job worth a damn, can’t keep his end of the bills taken care of…”

“As much as I’d love to hear you rag on Brady while I’m sitting here and can remind you of what _we_ once had, I think it’d be best if you got back to work.” The front legs of her chair hit the ground once more with a thud, Kjelle leaning into the table to give Severa a quick wink. “Don’t want you getting in trouble on your last day here, even if it’s pointless.”

“You’re probably—hey, wait a second, how’d you know today’s my last day?” The understanding of what had been said happened while she was in the middle of standing up, and the force that she used to throw her head back to look at Kjelle in shock was almost enough to topple herself over. She managed to regain control of her footing as she waited for an answer, something that never came as Kjelle just smirked back at her. “I’m chalking that up to someone telling you, because there’s no way you guessed that yourself.”

“More like, I figured I had a shot that I was right and went with it. Cynthia told me today was her last day and I thought, hey, if you two are anything like you were in school, once she’s out you’re out too.” Kjelle’s smirk only grew as she saw Severa struggling to come up with any witty response. “Don’t worry, I haven’t told a single soul about my suspicion about this. I’m the only one who knows.”

Finally finding a way to reply, Severa looked at all the empty chairs at the table around Kjelle and slowly nodded, not quite believing what she’d heard. “Uh huh, if you’re so sure about that, why are you sitting at a table meant for a bigger group? Inviting a whole party out for no reason, are you?”

“No way, I’m just holding down the fort until Gerome gets here with the ladies he’s collected since this dance thing’s happened in town. Had to be _some_ reason for me to be down near the theater, after all.” Kjelle gestured to the other chairs as she spoke, still not quite gaining Severa’s trust but doing a great job of illustrating her point. “Get back to work, I don’t need anything while he’s not here and, honestly, I doubt I’ll be staying long once he arrives.”

The first thing Severa thought to do was ask why she’d shown up in the first place, but she knew that questioning anything was just going to earn her another push to get working. “I hope I come back around before he gets here then, so maybe we can talk some more about all this. Otherwise…”

Nodding as she understood the point being made despite it not being said outright, Kjelle proceeded to tell her, “If you do, we can talk then, if not, we’ll come up with something. We’re creative ladies. We’re capable of that.”

“Yeah, well…okay, back to work. No time for this!” Smacking herself mentally as she walked away, Severa did glance back at Kjelle’s table a time or two before reaching the kitchen, only to remember that she really should have taken that time to check on her other tables instead of going to the kitchen to look for food that didn’t exist. After walking back into the dining room and caring for everyone in her section minus the table her mother was at, she intended on going to the kitchen once more, but as she was headed that way she heard two voices call out names for her; one of the people was Subaki, she was fairly certain, so he was ignored, but the other was a loud, shrill “Mama!” that had to have come from Lunabel.

But _what_ would Lunabel have been doing there? She looked around to see if she could see where her daughter was, but a hand grabbing onto her arm distracted her from it. “I hope we’re not intruding on anything important right now,” Lucina said as Severa locked eyes with her in her attempt to figure out what was going on. “I told Luna we would come looking for you and, as you heard, she found you before I did.”

“Hi Mama,” Lunabel’s little voice chirped from beside Lucina, reaching out to grab her mother before shrinking back when her mother’s confused eyes shot a glare at her. “Oh, okay, sorry Mama.”

“There is no need for you to be sorry, sweetie, I’m just…what are you doing here?” As the little girl wasn’t going to be able to give an answer of the quality Severa wanted to hear, she went back to looking at Lucina, who was scratching the side of her head almost sheepishly. “W-what’s going on? Where are you sitting? Why do you have my baby with you?”

Over Lunabel’s assertion of “I’m not a baby”, Lucina had to explain the answers to those questions, trying to stay as neutral as possible as she did. “We’re over at a table in Cynthia’s section, everyone talked about coming to see her on her last day and I guess I got roped in somehow. No one mentioned that you were here today, though, oddly enough.”

“Go back, who’s ‘we’ in this situation?”

The face-scratching picked up its pace. “Well, myself and Laurent, Brady and Luna, Owain, Noire, and their kids, and we have a seat saved for Inigo just in case he can pull himself away from the theater long enough…” With every name added to the list, it was clear that Lucina didn’t want to be saying it and Severa didn’t want to be hearing it, something that she addressed once she was done. “Sorry that we’re here for her and not for you, but look! It’s her last day, we all knew that was today, it’s not like you’re done here today as well.”

“Yeah, that’s true. Can’t come in to visit me and make me feel special when it’s her last day.” Severa was sure one or both of her eyes were twitching as she spoke, because she was playing along with an idea that wasn’t even true. It _was_ her last day as well, even if no one knew if it was. “Go back to what you’re here to do, I’ve got a job I need to be doing right now.” She glanced down at Lunabel once more, the little girl clinging to her aunt’s leg for dear life. “And I’ll see my little Luna when I get home after work today, she doesn’t need to come see me now.”

“My apologies for thinking you’d want to see her now,” Lucina said, finally letting go of Severa’s arm so she could turn and start walking Lunabel back to where they’d come from. “I should have realized that you weren’t going to be thrilled to know why we were here.”

Standing in silence as she watched them walk away, trying not to notice how Lunabel would keep turning back around to look at her mom until she couldn’t see her anymore, Severa mentally berated herself for being so short with them. But she had a point, they weren’t there for her and were therefore distracting her from her work, and they shouldn’t have come to bother her if they weren’t going to stick around. Especially not after admitting to why they were there to begin with.

After clearing her mind of thoughts on the matter, she decided to do another round of her tables, once again ignoring the one that had people actively calling for her at it, before pulling herself the same chair at a mostly-empty table and sitting back down in it. “I still don’t need anything, Severa, you really can focus on others if you want to,” Kjelle reminded her, not bothered slightly that she’d been intruded on. “I wouldn’t mind if you didn’t stop over here again.”

“Eh, no one else needs anything,” she lied in response, as it was audible to everyone that someone very much did need something from her. “I can spare a minute or two to chat with you, since you’re here.”  
“That’s a lot different than when I first came back into town, isn’t it?” The question wasn’t one that needed to be asked, but it was one that had constantly flitted back into Severa’s mind whenever she got to thinking about Kjelle. Things really had changed between the two of them in the past couple of months, and the change had been for the better as it had slowly been taking them back to how they’d been when they were younger. Kjelle must have noticed Severa thinking about that, because she laughed. “I’m just saying, you never wanted to be near me in those first weeks, and now look! You can’t get enough of me!”

“I wouldn’t say I can’t get enough, but it is true that I think you’re a great friend all over again, because you’ve actually proven yourself to care.” That was when Severa found herself grumbling about something Kjelle most likely had no knowledge of, and she didn’t mean to drag her friend into something she didn’t need to be involved in, but that was how it tended to happen. “Unlike basically everyone else there is, acting like Cynthia’s the only one who matters right now because they came in to see her and not me.”

“That would explain why Lucina was here, now that I think about it. Poor Severa, must be hard not being the center of attention for once in your life.” Kjelle spoke with a teasing tone, but she was striking a nerve within Severa with every word she added. “I can’t imagine what it must be like, being second to someone who hasn’t been in the shoes you’re wearing right now, when you already have.”

Her face scrunching up, Severa replied, “That’s not how it is at all, I’ll have you know. I get why they’re focusing on her, they don’t know what I’ve got planned and I can’t expect them to, but still. It sucks to not be the one they’re caring about.”

“Don’t worry about them, then. I care about you, and I’m sure that, as long as you’ve got one good friend in all of this, you’ll be fine.” Kjelle smiled at Severa, and after some consideration she returned the gesture, an exchange that was broken by someone walking up to the end of the table. Without looking at who was there, Kjelle told them, “It’s about time you showed up, I was starting to think that you—“

“I can assure you, I am not the person you think you’re speaking to.” The unexpected sound of Cordelia’s voice sent Severa getting to her feet as fast as possible, not wanting to be anywhere near where her mother was, while making Kjelle’s face go pale at how she’d addressed her friends mother. “While I’m sure they’re used to you speaking to them that way, I think I’d appreciate a bit more respect coming from someone like you.”

From behind Cordelia a few steps, Subaki could be heard saying, “Is this the type of riff-raff that Severa associates herself with? For shame, she really is quite a disappointment to the family if she thinks this kind of woman is acceptable.”

“I didn’t ask the peanut gallery back there for their opinion.” After causing Subaki to mutter more of his disapproving commentary under his breath, Kjelle collected herself and met Cordelia’s stern glance with a shrug. “Sorry for thinking you were Gerome right there, miss Severa’s mother. I guess I didn’t ever consider that someone else would want anything to do with me, aside from him or your daughter.”

“My intentions on coming over here weren’t anything to do with you, Kjelle. It’s nice to see you again after so long, your parents must be proud to have raised someone able to go out on her own without getting married behind everyone’s backs.” Tilting her head as she fakely smiled down at Kjelle, Cordelia shifted her eyes to look for where her daughter had managed to scramble off to, finding no trace of her in the area. “Now where could she have gone, there is no way she managed to get away that quickly…”

“You were distracted with scolding me and letting that guy back there rag on Severa, it’s possible she got away in plenty of time. Not like she’s incapable of moving fast if it means getting away from people she doesn’t like.” Now it was Kjelle’s turn to shoot the fake smile, although in doing so she made the expression on Cordelia’s face sour when she saw what was being shown to her. “What’s that, you don’t like when I talk back to you like that, do you?”

Cordelia shook her head slowly as she went back to looking around. “I hope that’s a trait you acquired from Severa, not one you gave to her. I praise you for coming back around and this is how you treat me, with the same hatred I’ve been stuck with from her for most of her life. I certainly hope you don’t talk to your mother the same way.”

“My mother would beat my ass so fast if I tried talked to her with an ounce of disrespect, it’s honestly hilarious that I’m getting away with it from you.” Chuckling, Kjelle realized that she was playing a dangerous game mouthing off towards a police officer that happened to be her friend’s mother, so she coughed to cover up that she’d been laughing. “Okay, I’ve got to admit, I’m doing this because Severa left and I know she’d enjoy someone talking to you like this, even though I know she’d wish it was her doing it.”

“How…considerate,” Cordelia managed to say before sighing, turning her back to the table. “I don’t see any sight of her, Subaki. Let’s just go sit back down and maybe she’ll turn up.”

The sound of grumbling fading as they headed back to where they had been sitting, Kjelle watched them walking away, seeing that they passed a group she’d been waiting for on their way back. “About time you showed up,” she repeated, once Gerome and his gaggle of ladies were close enough to hear her without needing to raise her voice too much. “I thought you died or something on your way here. These your lovely lunch dates?”

“They are,” he replied, motioning for her to stand up so he could take her seat, the ladies he had with him all taking chairs of their own, “and no, we did not die on the way here. Some of them wanted autographs of performers, you know how it is.”

They exchanged a fist-bump as he was sitting down, her laughing as their hands connected. “I sure do know how it is, always nice to see you understanding things like that after spending so much time not getting it at all. If a girl idolizes some famous person, let her get to meet them! Too bad you’ve learned that too late after ruining my chance to meet those weightlifters that night, huh?”

Gerome looked blankly at her, retracting his hand and setting it on his lap. “That was your doing, not mine. This is also not the place for that conversation, so let’s not have it here. Go get Severa so we can get started dining and so you can get out of here.”

“Sure thing, boss,” she mockingly said, saluting him before turning away from his table. Where she was going to go to find Severa, she had no idea, but at least she could go wander around and try finding her wherever. Or, she noticed as she looked around and spotted the long orange ponytail dangling near a table, she could just get to the point and find her right away. Had she known that the table Severa had gone to was the exact one she’d been avoiding, maybe she would have chosen to hang around and wait for her elsewhere, but by the time she had started casually strolling over to the table like she was a worker there she couldn’t change what she was doing. “Funny seeing you here, isn’t it?” she asked upon reaching the table’s side, draping her arm over Severa’s shoulders before looking at the two redheads sitting at the table. “All of you, I’m talking to all of you.”

Severa gave a heavy sigh as she pushed Kjelle’s arm off of her, turning to her to tell her, with a voice dripping with sarcasm, “Okay, normally I’d be okay with you interrupting me but seriously? My dear mommy here was telling me all about how you were attacking her with your words and I don’t think she wants to see you right now.”

“I would go as far as to say neither of us wanted to see you,” Subaki interjected, acting as if Severa’s words hadn’t been sarcastically said. “You embarrassed yourself with how you spoke to a lovely woman, and that alone should have told you not to come to our table while Severa was speaking with us. She might be a stain on the family, but she just does not compare to whatever type of disgrace you are to yours.”

“Okay, whatever, I’m not here to be an interruption of whatever’s happening here. Just came by to tell Severa that her other table’s finally here and would like her to stop by, but I guess if someone wants to make a big deal of me doing that for her I can…” Kjelle took a moment to punch one hand into her other palm, leaning in closer to where Subaki was sitting before dropping the open hand and taking a swing at him. If it hadn’t been for Severa and Cordelia both realizing what she was doing and grabbing her to restrain her, she would have hit him right in the nose, and he was visibly scared of her once she was pulled back. “Don’t talk bad about me or my family like that ever again, asshole. I catch you doing that again and I will break your nose, end of story.”

Before anyone present had a chance to say anything else, she was walking away, leaving without any goodbyes or further explanation. “I’m going to, er, go take care of someone else now,” Severa said, excusing herself from the table to head towards the one she’d been notified of, still leaving her mother and second cousin speechless. She wasn’t surprised when, later, they left without giving her a tip but managed to leave a long complaint written on a napkin. That was the final deciding factor in her mind for what she was going to do about this job, because if her bosses found out she’d had someone complain about how she “incited violence against paying customers”, they’d fire her in an instant.

Of course, not burning the bridge of employment there by telling the managers she quit and wasn’t going to be returning ever after that shift was probably not the smart thing to do, but at least she never had to worry about being asked to come back. And as far as anyone else knew, thanks to how she’d handled it, she was still going to be coming into work for what she’d been scheduled, meaning that she had some time to kill doing whatever she wanted—and she was certain she’d been spending some of that time with the only other person who was aware of what she’d done.

Keeping this under wraps was going to be a lot more fun than keeping news of someone cheating, that was for sure.

* * *

What had been expected was that, at the end of the shift, Severa would go outside to find Brady waiting for her so that he could give her a ride home like had been agreed upon. Something must have made him think he wasn’t obligated to do that for her, though, as she didn’t see any sight of her car outside the building, and rather than call him to ask what was going on and if he’d forgotten about her just because he’d come in to eat with friends, she went looking around to see if someone could help her out. If Kjelle hadn’t been sitting in her own car, most likely waiting for Gerome to get done trying to make moves on any of those ladies (they had long since paid and were just talking, which was how Severa had been allowed to leave), she might have needed to make that call after all.

But there Kjelle was, not doing anything important, and that was exactly where she was needed at that moment. After knocking on her window and startling her, she was let in the car and the whole story was explained. “Sounds like you just need a quick ride home,” Kjelle summarized, Severa nodding at the simple version of the story. “Just tell me the way there and I’ll do it for you, no problem. You’re living at his parents’ place, aren’t you? And that’s in the ritzy part of town, right?”

“Yes and yes, and I’m sure at this point one or both of his parents are home and distracted him from coming to get me from work.” Sighing, Severa let Kjelle start driving before she started giving directions, and those directions were short and and rather easy to follow, due to the straightforward way to get back to the house from the restaurant. The ride was quick, and as they were pulling up to the house she felt like she had something to ask regarding it. “So, uh, do I owe you anything for doing this? I could have walked home if I really needed to get back, but you came through for me.”

“Not like I was doing anything else but waiting to maybe play driver for Gerome and a potential bedroom buddy,” she replied, parking the car so that Severa could get out. “But you know what, if you feel like you owe me something, I could always use some more friend time with you.”

“And I know I’ve got a lot of time where I could give you that.” The two ladies locked eyes and laughed, before exchanging farewells as Severa got out and headed up into the house. She was greeted at the front door by an unusual face, confirming her suspicion that Brady had been distracted by one of his parents, but at the same time raising questions as to what was going on. As the door was held open for her by her father-in-law, who was holding her daughter in his other hand, she felt like she needed to say something to him, but all that could come out was, “Why are you here already?”

“What an odd question to ask someone, but I’ll accept it.” Chrom closed the door behind Severa once she was inside and directed her towards the kitchen table, where they could sit and talk. She hesitated to follow him, but when she saw Lunabel in his arms, waving excitedly at her mother, she knew she couldn’t resist. “To answer that question, I took today off to go out with everyone for lunch. Cynthia was a lot like a second daughter to me while she was growing up, so it was easy to sacrifice work for her.”

Severa had to think for a second about what that meant, before her eyes widened as gears in her mind started turning. “But why didn’t you all ride over there together today then, if you were already off?” she asked, although deep down she knew that the answer she was about to receive wasn’t the one she wanted.   
“We…did, Severa,” Chrom replied with a laugh, watching as her eyes went wider. “What, did you forget about how you got to work this morning?”

She had just taken to her seat but she was getting back to her feet, smacking herself on the forehead for what she’d done. “ _Yes_ , actually, I did forget!”

“How did you get home then?” He wasn’t given a response, as she was already storming off to go call for someone to take her back over to the restaurant so she could retrieve the car she’d left there on accident. In the wake of her realization, Chrom looked at Lunabel, who was trying her hardest not to laugh at her mother’s bizarre behavior. “She’s a strange one, isn’t she Luna?”

“Mama’s so silly,” the girl replied, cupping one of her cheeks while pointing a finger into her grandfather’s face. “And so is you!” As she dissolved into giggles, he couldn’t help but sigh as he watched her, feeling her finger jab into his face in several places. When she repeated her assertion, he sighed again, still feeling like something was missing from her statement.

“Can’t you…call me something, Luna?” he asked her, putting an end to her giggling simply because he was talking to her. “You have ‘Mamaw-belle’ for your grandmother, but what about for me, hm? Can’t you have a name for me?”

She went into deep thought for a second, her eyes closing only to open back up as she proudly shook her head. “No way, you silly!” With her repetition of her new favorite word, she was back to giggling and he was back to watching the little girl having the time of her life, depite making him feel left out of something by doing so.

Meanwhile, standing halfway up the staircase lost in her own thoughts, Severa tried to come up with some way to solve the problem she had created for herself without doing the obvious and asking Chrom to help her out. She did like him as a person, and he was definitely the one of her in-laws that she preferred to ask for help, but she didn’t want to burden him with fixing her mistake. If she were in a better physical condition, she would most likely have just walked back to the restaurant to get the car, but she knew for a fact that she would not enjoy having to do that. But that didn’t mean that she couldn’t ask someone else to walk down there for her, in particular a someone that wasn’t doing anything else with their time.

She finished ascending the stairs and went straight to the door to the bedroom her and Brady were living out of, throwing it open to startle him. What she saw inside startled her instead, as it wasn’t just her husband sitting in there doing nothing—he had invited a friend that she did not want to see. “Why, hello there Severa,” Inigo said to her, waving at her from where he was sitting on the floor beside Brady, her having interrupted some conversation of theirs. “Haven’t you ever been taught to knock when entering somewhere? You could have come in on a private moment.”

“I wasn’t even aware ya were home yet, Sev,” Brady added, turning so that he could see his wife standing slack-jawed in the doorway. “What’s got ya lookin’ like that? We weren’t doing anything bad in here, I swear.”

Her eyes were trying to find somewhere to rest that wasn’t where they were being drawn to, because she did not want to be looking at Inigo’s face, nor did she want to look at Brady and have him read her expression as implying something. “I…I came in to ask you if you’d help me out with something, but since you’re clearly having a circle-jerk here with your friend, I’ll ask someone else.” She didn’t give him a chance to ask anything else before she was stepping back out into the hall and closing the door; on the other side she could hear them both questioning what had just happened in confusion.

So much for asking him to help her out, which meant that she could either burden Chrom or call someone, since she wasn’t going to do it herself. In order to have the phone conversation she decided on without someone overhearing her, she ducked into the storage room down the hall, the clutter of all her unnecessary belongings that didn’t fit in their current living space a reminder of the stupid decisions that had led to her being exactly where she was. At this point, her car was the only thing she had left that was really _hers_ , and she needed to go back and get it before someone tried stealing it. Her dialing of the number was quick, as was the answering of the phone, but before she could say a word, her recipient was laughing. “About time you called me asking for me to take you back over there. I was wondering how long it would take for you to realize you didn’t need a ride.”

“Let me guess, you’re outside right now, aren’t you?” When Kjelle only answered with more laughter, Severa sighed in defeat, knowing that she’d been played as a fool for a moment here. “I’ll be right out, thanks for having my back on this.”

“You know I’m here for you, now get down here, I’m sure by the time I get back Gerome’s going to be asking where I went.” She ended the call after saying that, and Severa cracked a smile at how at least someone was reliable at this time. As she opened the door to sneak out and go back down the stairs, she could see that the door to her room was open again, which meant that there was a chance her heading for the stairs would result in a confrontation between her and Inigo, something that she did not want.

After praying that it wouldn’t happen, she made her attempt to leave, and was promptly stopped at the top of the stairs by someone in that room speaking to her. “Sev, where do ya think you’re going now? Didn’t you just get home from work? I don’t know if I like this idea of you goin’ somewhere so soon.”

“I’ll be right back, Brady, don’t worry about me. Just focus on your little boyfriend in there and that’s all you need to do.” She started down the stairs, taking them carefully in case he came up behind her and she didn’t want to accidentally slip, so when he came out of the room and started following her, she had already expected exactly that. “I don’t know why you’re coming with, this doesn’t involve you.”

“Well, you comin’ in without warning kinda ruined what me and Inigo were talking about, so I think whatever you’re doing involves me plenty. Just tell me what’s goin’ on so I can help.” At this point, they were nearly at the bottom of the stairs, and Severa was lamenting the fact that she couldn’t just jump off the remaining steps and make a run for the door. “C’mon, your silence isn’t helping anything right now, Sev. Tell me what’s goin’ on.” She took another step without saying a word, which caused him to sigh in exasperation. “You know what, that’s fine, if ya don’t want to tell me what’s going on I can deal with it.”

“It doesn’t matter, I’ve got it under control and I’ll be right back after I fix what I did wrong. Go back to your super-important conversation with that super-busy friend of yours, I know what’s going on with me right this moment doesn’t actually matter to you.” The words Severa was saying were not meant fully, but she didn’t know how else to word her aggression without outright stating why she was so angry with Inigo. She was aware that this way of handling it made it look like she was upset with Brady as well, but honestly, she had a lot of reason to be upset with him.

He took her anger to heart, because when he spoke again once they were both on the ground floor and she was heading for the door, he was in tears. “Well, if that’s how you’re gonna be, I guess I don’t wanna care about what’s goin’ on. So much for me tryin’ to be a decent guy for you when I get the chance. You just push me away because I don’t matter.”

“That’s not—Brady why—oh good gods you’re going to cry over this, aren’t you?” Severa grabbed at the sides of her head in frustration, irritated that he was handling this like a child rather than the grown adult he was. “I just made a mistake regarding how I got to work today, and now I need to go back to get our car. That’s all, don’t jump to conclusions, everything’s _fine_.”

“Why couldn’t ya have just said that to begin with?” he asked, sniffling. “I think I’d have understood that a whole lot better than ya comin’ in shootin’ daggers at me because I had a friend over for the first time in a long while.”

“I didn’t want to intrude on your time with him once I knew you were having it!” Knowing that every second she spent arguing was another second Kjelle was having to spend sitting outside, Severa turned to look over her shoulder at Brady while he was trying to collect himself, sighing when she saw how tear-stained his cheeks were. “Gods, I married a crybaby who can’t handle his wife putting him first for once.”

“You know that’s not what happened here, but I get ya. Go and…” He stopped to give a pathetic cough as he tried to shake off his emotions. “Go and spend your time with whoever’s givin’ ya a ride and I’ll spend my time here with Inigo, I guess.”

She nodded, turning back forward and reaching the door without further distraction. “I’ll be right back, I promise,” she assured him, blowing him a kiss as she opened the door and let herself outside, but when she tried closing the door she found it impossible to do so as he had run up to grab it for himself. “Er, Brady? What did we just discuss?”

“I decided I’m comin’ with, friends are great but spendin’ time with my wife means more than spendin’ time with Inigo ever could.” The gesture was kind, and Severa did appreciate that he was putting her before his friend in his mind, but she hadn’t told Kjelle that she wasn’t going to be alone on this, and she wasn’t sure how well Brady’s presence would be received for the short trip.

Kjelle took it in stride when she had an unexpected passenger tagging along, greeting them both with a smile as she let them in her car. “Nice to see you again, preggo,” she told Severa with a wink, before looking towards Brady and letting loose on him with exactly what was on her mind. “And you, did you know that your wife here’s gone completely stupid with forgetting things? Forgot to visit a table all day at work, forgot she drove herself today, seriously I think you need to be attached to her at the hip more often now. Never let her out of your sight.”

It was a kind sentiment, and Brady got a good laugh out of it, but Severa knew that it wasn’t going to be followed even slightly. That was reaffirmed after they were at the restaurant, because the parting words exchanged between the ladies was a setting of what time they’d meet up the following day, without anyone suspecting a thing.


	7. Disadvantages

Brady woke up the next morning to the sound of his wife tapping away at her phone, something that he wasn’t accustomed to as she was normally out of bed by the time he finally was awake. “What’s keeping ya here today?” he asked her, rolling over to look at her with a sleepy smile. “Aren’t you supposed to be at work already?”

“What do you think I’m laying here doing, I’m making promises of free stuff to the person who switched shifts with me today.” Stopping her typing long enough to notice that he was trying to read her screen, Severa laid her phone down on the blankets that were still covering her and sighed. “Seriously, B, that’s all I’m doing right now. I’m not feeling getting out of bed right now and everyone at work knows that if I want a shift switched, they better do it for me.”

“So what, you’re workin’ tonight or just later in the afternoon, or what is it?” When she confirmed that it was just a morning shift for a night one, he rolled back over and let plans start brewing in his mind. “Okay, cool, maybe that means me and the guys can head over there for dinner to sit in your section. You wouldn’t mind us doin’ that, would you?”

The shudder that went down Severa’s spine was nearly strong enough for Brady to feel it, but thankfully he was unaware that he’d caught her in a sticky situation. “It’d probably be for the best if you didn’t show up, honestly,” she admitted, not wanting to say why unless she was prodded further. Which, she knew, she was going to be, and so after she was asked what the reason for that decision was, she came up with something on the fly. “Well, you know, people who are in town for that festival need somewhere to eat, and everywhere downtown’s constantly packed, so they flock to the restaurant and make life hell for us working there. Wouldn’t want your group sitting in that mess.”

“We wouldn’t mind it, not if it meant seeing ya do what you’re best at,” he told her, unaware that she was looking horrified at his insistence to keep talking about that possibility. “But you know what, we were all just there yesterday, maybe it’s for the best if we skip doin’ that if we even do anything today. Do you know how hard it is to keep Luna from wakin’ up those twins if they’re asleep?”

After picking her phone back up to make sure she hadn’t accidentally called who she was messaging in her hastiness to throw it down, Severa sighed in relief at seeing that her screen had simply dimmed, knowing that her sigh was going to be taken as her being exasperated with the question she’d been asked. “I wouldn’t know at all, seeing as I’m the one who works in this family and therefore doesn’t get to spend any time out with her.”

“H-hey now, I’m tryin’ to fix that issue! It’s just hard when no one around here’s hirin’ because there’s so little business happenin’ thanks to the festival downtown!” Brady sounded almost as if his feelings were hurt by Severa’s dig at his work situation, and she couldn’t be bothered to care if she had hurt him or not. It was moderately frustrating to know that he wasn’t actually trying at all, but she knew that she’d get her revenge on him the moment he found out she wasn’t going to work ever again and that her claiming to be messaging someone to cover her shift was merely a ruse. “Are ya, I don’t know, going to say anything about how I can try harder or somethin’ like that? That’s all Ma ever does when we bring this up.”

Severa rolled her eyes as she went back to typing out her message to the person she was trying to contact. “I don’t think you’re capable of trying much harder than you already have on this. I mean, your first job was basically handed to you because you really needed to step up and try being a decent father for a change. And now that’s gone and you’re showing everyone that you never were decent at all, and that’s just how it is.”

“Are you serious right now? I’m a completely decent father, and everyone knows it. Bein’ a dad isn’t just about bringin’ money in to support the family, you know. I spend a hell of a lot more time with Luna than you’d ever want to, and you don’t hear me saying you’re a bad mom for that.” He sat up as he was speaking, looking towards Severa and seeing as she was immersing herself back in the conversation she was having digitally. “Okay, I get your point, you’re gonna give me this silent treatment until I do somethin’ to prove you wrong.”

Her shrug made him get to his feet, towering over her and the bed they’d been sleeping on as he tried to work through the upsetting thoughts she was forcing him to have. “I’m just gonna go downstairs and make sure Ma hasn’t snapped and hurt Luna for doin’ something like jump on the couches. You just…do whatever, I guess.” Even in the moment of disagreement, he made sure to tell her a rushed “I love you, Sev” as he left the room, closing the door that had already been opened (from Luna sneaking out to go be with her grandmother) behind him.

Before the door was fully latched Severa had allowed herself to break out into a huge grin, her plan for duping Brady having actually worked out for her. “I cannot believe he didn’t stop for a second to question me,” she said to herself, as she got out of bed and started preparing for the day. “He just took me talking about doing something for work at face value and didn’t think that it was weird that I was doing something like that last-minute. Seriously, he should have remembered what yesterday was and put two and two together.”

When her phone started buzzing with questions of where she was and why she hadn’t shown up to work yet (from coworkers who had no idea of what she’d done the day before), she ignored them in order to reply to the messages she wanted to read, ones relevant to what she was going to be doing instead of working. As she got herself ready she made sure to make it look like she was going to go to work eventually, just to keep up the appearances, but under her work clothes she had on something more fitting for the summer season. “Really wish I could, you know, just wear one outfit today but I guess some things are just impossible,” she griped as she struggled to get her work shirt on over the tanktop she was going to be wearing the moment she knew she was safe. “This thing barely fits me anymore normally, why the fuck would it ever fit me if I’ve got something on underneath it?”

That led her to look at herself in the mirror there in the bedroom, her shirt halfway on as she glared at her reflection. “I really need to work on not getting so damn hideous when I’m pregnant. Seriously, I can’t even believe that I’ve let this happen to me.” Trying not to focus too much on her appearance in the mirror, she got the shirt down and secured by its hem into the waistband of her pants, which were quickly growing uncomfortable on her due to the shorts she had on underneath them. “I don’t think anyone else I know ever got this huge when they were pregnant. Not even Noire, and she was…”

The words came to a halt as Severa looked at her reflection again, a memory coming to her that she hadn’t thought about in a long time. “She was huge and I made fun of her, didn’t I? What if this is all some cruel joke being played on me by the gods to make me pay for making fun of someone who was carrying twins?” Hesitantly she laid a hand down on the top of her stomach, looking down at how small her hand looked compared to what its backdrop was, and she sighed, throwing her head back and calling towards the ceiling, “I get it, I said something nasty about someone without having the full story, now stop torturing me will you?”

Predictably there wasn’t any sort of answer given to her plea, but she did feel a long kick underneath her hand, which in that moment was just enough to remind her that while she may have been upset about her size, there was a very important reason for it. “Gods, I hope when you’re born it doesn’t take forever to get back to how I should look, and I hope more that you’re not some huge baby trying to squeeze your way out of me.” She gently pat where her hand was resting, feeling another kick that made her laugh at how odd the current situation was. She was screaming at invisible gods and threatening her unborn child, and who in their right mind did either of those things?

At any rate, she finished with getting ready, only finding distraction in her reflection a couple more times, before she headed downstairs to see what everyone else was up to. There wasn’t any excuse for her to hang around in the bedroom all day before she went to “work”, and she couldn’t quite leave early without raising red flags, so immersing herself in what the rest of the family was doing was the only option she had. “Mama, you’re awake!” Lunabel screamed when she saw her mother coming down the stairs, running to meet her at the bottom. “You going to work?”

“Not right now, sweetie,” she replied, reaching down to place her hand on her daughter’s head, finding that her hair wasn’t done up in its normal pigtails as it hung limp and long. “Say, why haven’t you had someone do your hair for you today, Luna? Aren’t you going to try looking like a big girl for a change?”

Although Severa couldn’t see it, Lunabel puffed her cheeks out and looked angry at the accusation of not looking like a big girl ever, something she didn’t stop doing until she pulled herself away from her mother and ran off. “I _am_ a big girl!” she yelled as she went towards the kitchen. “Mamaw-belle, I am a big girl! Mama says not!”

“That would be because your mother is incapable of seeing the bright and lovely daughter she’s raised as anything more than a nuisance.” Just hearing what Maribelle had to say made Severa roll her eyes, because the woman was speaking after having only heard one half of the other conversation, but she had to accept that her mother-in-law was going to make comments like that. That changed, however, when Maribelle recognized that she didn’t know the context of what had initially been said. “I don’t think she was actually saying you are not a big girl, Lunabel my love, I think she was making a comment on something in particular about you. How you ran to her screaming like a banshee, perhaps?”

“More like, how she looks like she just rolled out of bed despite having been awake longer than me and Brady both,” Severa clarified, as she went to the kitchen to see what Maribelle was doing in there. She had assumed it was cooking or cleaning or something else typically done by housewifes (as Maribelle had a habit of taking on housewife tasks whenever she was around, to try and show her how a good wife acted), but when she saw that she was in there making stacks of ripped pages from magazines on the counter, she was confused. “Wait, what have you been doing with my daughter since she’s been awake?”

“Just some bonding activities, nothing to worry about.” Maribelle turned from what she was doing to smile at Severa, who didn’t trust a word of what she had just said. “Oh, don’t look at me with such disgust. We spent the morning going through catalogues of cute clothes for her and her baby sister, so that when the time comes they can match as best as possible.”

“And you chose doing that over getting her ready for the day?” Raising her eyebrows, Severa waited for Maribelle to have some answer to give her, but when she was met with silence she sighed. “Okay, I can respect that you want to spoil your grandbabies, but you have to actually take care of Luna when you’re watching her. Let me guess, you haven’t fed her yet today either, have you?”

Shaking her head, Maribelle waited to hear Severa’s loud gasp followed with “I knew it!” before she explained herself. “I didn’t feed her yet, but I did send her father out to the store to get some things so I can make a brunch for us all. He should be back soon, I would assume, seeing as it does not take an hour to get a list of six items.”

“That…that’s really nice of you, Maribelle.” Feeling a bit ashamed for jumping to the conclusion she had about what the woman was doing, not to mention her feeling of shock that it had been at _least_ an hour since she’d woken up already, Severa was debating on apologizing or not when both ladies heard the front door to the house open, a sound followed by Lunabel screeching a hello at her father.

A few moments later, Brady joined the two ladies in the kitchen, Lunabel holding onto his leg tightly once he stopped walking, and he pushed his lone bag of groceries at his mother. “I got exactly what ya asked for, which was really hard seein’ as the store I thought to go to didn’t have any of that. Guess I’m still more used to low-class living than I realized.”

“What do you mean, ‘low-class living’?” Severa asked, while Maribelle smirked at the statement before moving all the catalogue pages out of her work space so she could begin preparing her meal. “You didn’t just say that, did you? We weren’t low class, and we would have been higher class if you had ever found a better job!”

“I didn’t mean it as an insult, Sev. I just…forgot that a lot of the stuff Ma wants from the store can’t be found in stores that aren’t the ones she shops at. Have you ever seen goat milk at the store we shopped at? I don’t think so.” Brady was trying his best to ignore the daggers Severa was shooting at him with her eyes, as he didn’t see the issue with what he had said, but they were too much to not address. “C’mon, don’t act like I attacked ya or something, all I said was that the store we used to go to isn’t exactly the classiest place.”

“Whatever, that’s not what you meant by what you said and we all know it. Next time you make an excuse for something and choose to impress your mother over actually owning up to what you’ve said, don’t expect me to not fight back.” Rolling her eyes as she turned to head out of the kitchen, Severa could feel the emotional distress in Brady’s eyes as he watched her leave, but she wasn’t going to continue talking about it further. She drew up a chair at the table, turned it around so it was facing the kitchen’s entrance, and sat down, waiting for when everyone would come join her.

They never did, and for the next half hour or so she was treated to listening to whispers exchanged by mother and son in the kitchen, while they prepared the meal that had caused this entire rift. Lunabel did leave her father’s side to come sit with her mother, but as she was a young child she was quick to dart off into the rest of the house and start causing trouble for herself that someone should have gone to stop, but Severa didn’t feel like corralling her daughter and no one else who was there seemed to be paying attention. By the time the meal was ready, the girl had come back and her mother had finally been able to do something with her hair to make it look less like a disaster, even though as she was tying it up Lunabel kept going on and on about all the things she’d pulled down and played with while she was running around unsupervised.

That wasn’t any kind of information Severa was going to pass along to Maribelle, and she made sure to tell the little girl to keep quiet as well. “You got it, Mama!” she squeaked, pushing her cheeks up with her hands as she spoke. “Mamaw-belle gets to not know!”

“I get to not know what, Lunabel my darling?” Maribelle asked as she came out of the kitchen, Brady following behind her with plates of food in his hands. “Surely you and your mother aren’t choosing to keep secrets behind my back, not while you’re living in my house. That would be grounds for leaving, I would think.”

Lunabel contorted her face as she thought about what to say to her grandmother, glancing to her mom a few times for any kind of advice she might give. As Severa couldn’t say or do anything without raising suspicion, all she did was shake her head at the girl before she started on turning her chair back around properly. “Luna’s not got secrets,” she finally answered, letting her face relax. “Mamaw-belle gets to know now.”

“Then what do I get to know, dearie? Is it important to hear now, or shall we at least first eat before we get to the story?” The look on Lunabel’s face as she realized that, depending on when she told her grandmother what she’d done, she could get two very different reactions was one of deviousness, while the one on Severa’s face as it dawned on her that her daughter telling Maribelle what she’d done was going to end horribly was one determined to keep the story from being told right there. The girl ultimately decided to wait until after everyone had gotten to eat to tell about how she’d gone into the master bedroom unsupervised and trashed it because she had found that the door was unlocked, and that meant there was one furious Maribelle to deal with.

She couldn’t take her anger out on her granddaughter, though, not when she looked into her grinning face and saw innocence and a desire to have fun looking back at her. That was why she ultimately forced the girl’s parents to fix what had been wronged, but as Maribelle had a hard time punishing her son for anything either, the blame fell entirely on Severa’s shoulders. The one positive she could find to having to reorganize a bedroom that wasn’t her own was that it was passing the time faster than sitting around doing nothing could have, although she would have loved to have done without having to handle so many of Maribelle’s belongings.

By the time she was done, it was mid-afternoon and the house was completely empty aside from herself, no one having bothered to tell her they were leaving or even where they were going. “Well, looks like I’m going to need a ride to get out of here,” she remarked as she looked out one of the front windows and saw that her car was gone, meaning that Brady most likely had gone out somewhere by himself. “If only I knew someone who’d come pick me up in an instant…”

Within minutes she had confirmation that Kjelle was on her way to come get her, and that meant that her first day spent not working was going to start sooner than expected, something she was more than okay with.

* * *

“So let me get this straight, they made you clean up Luna’s mess and then abandoned you? What a bunch of assholes.” That was all Kjelle had to say about what Severa had told her on the car ride back to her place, and it was just enough of a blunt and true comment to make Severa smile. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to make you clean anything while you’re over. Unless, you know, you take a look at what’s going on and decide you want to.”

“I doubt I’m going to want to clean anything, I’m already over cleaning from what I did today. I don’t know how Luna managed to find some of that stuff, but she must have had a great time digging through drawers and under the bed.” Sighing, Severa looked over to Kjelle, who was concentrating on navigating through a crowded street swarmed by visitors to the dance festival. “Aren’t you scared you’re going to hit someone going this way? Why did you choose to drive through downtown?”

“It’s the quickest way to get to the apartment, all these people be damned. I haven’t hit anyone yet and I’m not going to today, not with you in the car with me. Now let me focus on this, I don’t need you distracting me with all these people around.” She leaned up on the wheel a bit as she carefully drove through the crowds, her last obstacle being having to go around a few people standing in the middle of the street with no intentions of walking anywhere. “Why do these idiots come here, act like roadblocks, and get offended when someone drives past them?”

Severa glanced into the rearview mirror to see the very same people they’d just passed all giving rude hand gestures in their direction. “Maybe because they’re pedestrians and we’re supposed to treat them with respect? But they weren’t moving, they don’t deserve that kind of treatment.”

“Let me guess, they were flipping us off, weren’t they?” When Severa said they were, Kjelle slammed on the breaks and threw the car into reverse, barreling backwards until they were nearly hitting the people still in the road. She then rolled down her window and stuck her own hand out, giving them the same gesture they’d been displaying as she went back into drive and sped off down the road.

“I can’t believe you just did that,” Severa said with a laugh, as Kjelle closed her window once more, their destination in sight. “What if they’d moved, or if someone else had walked out in front of them? You said you weren’t going to hit anyone with me here in the car.”

Kjelle gave a one-shouldered shrug, as she turned into the parking lot for her apartment building. “We were close enough to here that if I’d hit someone, you would’ve been able to run here just fine, so I figured, hey, why not have some fun with it? Best case scenario, we get a laugh out of it. Worst case, I’m in jail and you have to walk home. And as you’re not running, I think we both know which ending we got.”

“Yeah, the one where you aren’t trying to kill me by making me run.” Still laughing, Severa watched as Kjelle messily parked her car in the spot closest to her apartment, the spot next to it thankfully being empty as she was over the line when they got out. “Aren’t you, I don’t know, going to fix this shit job of how you parked?”

“Why should I? Spot next to it is Gerome’s, and he won’t mind that I’m over the line when he drives up in his little scooter thing.” Miming ringing a bell on a bike handle, Kjelle nearly caused herself to double over in laughter at what she’d just said, but she collected herself and led Severa into her apartment, which was completely dark when she opened the door. “Oh damn it, we paid the utilities for this thing this month, why’s the power out right now?”

“Maybe it just got too hot for the power to work?” Severa suggested, adding, “That used to happen at my old place all the time in the summer. Was a bitch to deal with, but I got around it by going to hang out at work.”

“You know what, that’s a great idea, Severa! Why don’t we just go hang out at your work?” There was a pause, as the two ladies stood inside the entryway of the darkened apartment, while they both thought about what was wrong with that suggestion. When Severa reached out and smacked Kjelle’s arm for what she’d said, she laughed at the reaction she’d received. “I was hoping you’d say something dumb like that so I could tease you about quitting your job the way you did. Now give me some space, I’m going to call the office to see what’s going on with the lights.”

As Kjelle stepped outside to be able to actually see as she paced around to make the necessary phone call, Severa was left in the dark apartment alone. “I’m starting to think doing this was a bad idea, if the one place I thought I could go to escape everything isn’t going to work out,” she muttered to herself, before pulling her phone out and using it as a flashlight. “But whatever, I’m here and I’m not going home anytime soon. Might as well go change out of these work clothes so I’m not dying if we have to sit outside to wait for the power.”

Illuminating her way towards one of the rooms in the apartment, Severa wasn’t sure which room she was going to end up in but she figured that going into any was more acceptable than changing in the main room. Based on the bare-bones interior of the room she stumbled into, she assumed it was Gerome’s, but she wasn’t entirely certain of that. Even if it was, it didn’t matter because he wasn’t home and wasn’t going to be walking in on her taking her overclothes off to get down to the much lighter ones she had on underneath.

While in the middle of getting her pants off, she heard Kjelle come back into the apartment, the front door slamming shut behind her. “Main office says it should be back on shortly, guess someone day-drinking had a bit of fun running over a transformer and knocked out power for the whole complex. Now where the hell did you get off to, it’s not like you’re able to move all that fast anymore.”

“I’m in one of the rooms!” she called back, hoping that Kjelle would hear her response and accept it. “I got tired of wearing two sets of clothes so I went ahead and took one off.” As she was explaining she was successfully finishing up getting her pants off, holding them and her work shirt on her arm as she hoped she hadn’t made what she was wearing underneath look too bad by doubling up on outfits. “Anyway, whose room is this that I’m in?”

“Does it really matter? Unless you’re planning on crawling into the bed in the room, in which case I hope you’re in my room because I’d love for you to be in my bed.” The laughter Severa gave in response was hollow, as she was hoping that she really was in Gerome’s room at that point. “But based on where I hear you coming from, I don’t think it’s my room. And that sucks for you.”

“Why does that suck for me?” Severa was already grabbing her phone and shifting where its light was shining, to look around the room. “You’re not implying he’s got a girl under the bed or something in here, right?”

“Of course I’m not, he’d never do that to a girl. He’d let her be right at home in the whole apartment, as it should be. I’m just saying that some weird things have happened in that room, and it might be haunted or something. Don’t need a creepy ghost trying to make moves on you, now do you?” She was right, and no sooner had her question been asked was Severa jumping for the door, trying to get out as fast as she could. Midway through her attempt to find the knob, the sound of the power being restored came through the building, turning lights that had seemed to be off back on, and she was able to see that she was on the completely wrong side of the door to be looking for its knob. When she got the door open she was greeted with Kjelle on the other side, smiling at her. “Nice to see you managed to get out of there alive, Severa. Was scared you wouldn’t make it.”

“Shut up, you weren’t scared at all.” Severa shoved her clothes at Kjelle, who was taken by surprise at the motion, before she stormed off back towards the main room. “I was just changing, I told you that, then you started on that fake ghost crap I know you don’t believe a word of.”

Following her, Kjelle rolled the clothes she’d received into a ball and tossing it over Severa, hitting the front door before the outfit fell to the floor. “You’re right, I don’t believe a word of it. Doesn’t mean I’m not going to bring it up when you’re in there. I do it to every girl Gerome brings home, it’s amazing how many of them actually buy into it.”

“Are we going to spend this entire day talking about him and his girlfriends? Seems that’s all we can seem to talk about, so…” Severa froze when she heard a loud creaking noise, her mind having immediately gone to the idea of ghosts and the place being haunted, so she turned to see what was happening and saw Kjelle standing on the armrest of the couch, the sound having come from her landing. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“Giving you something else to talk about, what does it look like?”

“It looks like you’re trying to break that couch, that’s what.” Turning back around, Severa waited until she heard Kjelle jump back down before she said anything else, but as she opened her mouth to speak the creaking noise happened again, and she whipped her head around to see. “What are you—oh now you’re just sitting there, real cute.”

“Why thanks, I happen to think I’m cute.” Kjelle raised a hand and brushed it through the side of her hair, running her fingers through its short length effortlessly. “I mean, I didn’t spend an arm and a leg this morning trying to keep looking plain and boring. Figured making myself ‘cute’ for a change would be nice.”

“I wasn’t commenting on your actual appearance, although yes, your hair looks nice I suppose. You planning on announcing that you’re leaving today, since you changed your hair?” Severa’s question wasn’t unfounded, as she distinctly remembered that the last interaction she’d had with Kjelle before she’d disappeared on her journey was right after her friend had turned what had once been long hair that rivaled her own into a much shorter style. “Or are you being serious about this whole cute thing?”

“My mother suggested trimming it up a bit, since it’s been so hot and shorter hair means less worry about getting it out of the way. Maybe you should take her advice as well, I bet your hair’s a pain to deal with when it’s hot like this.” Running her hand through her hair again, Kjelle watched as Severa reached behind her and grabbed her single long ponytail, dragging her hand down over it until she couldn’t anymore. “I bet you’d look amazing with shorter hair, and maybe a different color to it too. I wonder what you’d look like with darker hair.”

Ignoring the fact that her ponytail did feel oddly heavy, therefore making the idea of chopping it off sound all the more appealing, Severa shook her head at the attached comment. “I can’t dye my hair right now, you’re not supposed to when you’re pregnant, and even if I _could_ it wouldn’t take anyway. Remember back when we tried that years ago, and it washed right out?”

“Yeah, you managed to stain the carpet of my bedroom with that dye as it dripped everywhere, and my parents were furious that we used their towels to try and clean it up.” Kjelle chuckled at the memory, leaning back on the couch and closing her eyes. “I miss those good old days of when we were young and stupid and completely unaware of how much growing up we’d have to do.”

“Hey now, I distinctly remember already living on my own at that point, I think I was completely aware of how grown up you had to be to do that.” As she was talking, Severa was moving towards the kitchen, wanting to look around and see what might have been in there to snack on. She wasn’t necessarily hungry at the moment, but she needed to know if there was something she’d want if she did get hungry at any point. When she saw the counters stacked impossibly high with trash and takeout boxes, her expectations were lowered greatly in regards to finding anything. “Do you two ever cook anything yourselves?” she asked, eyeing the boxes with slight contempt at what they meant. “Or do you spend your entire budget on food?”

“Neither of us are really cooks,” Kjelle replied, the sound of the couch squeaking letting Severa know that she was getting up to join her. “But sometimes, if Gerome finds a girl who’ll cook for us, we’ll get a nice meal for a change. Otherwise, it’s whatever we feel like that’ll deliver here to us. Do you have a problem with that?”

Severa looked at Kjelle, who was waiting on her to answer with a curious expression. “I don’t have a problem with it, it just makes me wonder how you two have the money to do all this, or how you’ve managed to not fuck yourselves up with eating nothing but unhealthy garbage all the time.”

“I don’t think you have _any_ place to make that judgment, not when you have a huge vice in the way of sweets that, er, obviously wreck your body.” Kjelle’s expression turned into a smug one as Severa rolled her eyes, knowing that she’d been put in her place there. “Besides, we make sure to only order things that we could easily make here at home, or we order super healthy things. Nothing too destructive, and if we do splurge, so what? I’m a freelance physical trainer, I know how to kick my ass back into shape if needed.”

Hearing her say that gave Severa an idea that she wasn’t sure if she wanted to mention or not. She looked down at herself, cringing at how her stomach swelled out not just because she was pregnant but because she fed far into her combined cravings and sweet tooth all the time, and decided that at least mentioning her idea was worth it. “So, once I can get back into shape you’re going to help me out with that, right?” she asked, looking back to Kjelle while batting her eyelashes. “Friends help friends out, so you should.”

“It’ll cost you a pretty penny to get me to help you with that, if you want the full treatment. And that’s even if I’m still in town when the time comes. Who knows when we’ll get tired of being here and head off to the next adventure.” It wasn’t a no, but it was definitely not the unconditional yes Severa had been expecting to be given. “I’ll think about it, though, especially if you’re serious about this.”

“Of course I’m serious about this! I worked hard to stop looking like a grossly inflated animal after having Luna, and it’s happened again and I’d like a different way to go about fixing it this time, if you don’t mind. Some way that doesn’t involve me being alone in everything.” Severa took hold of her hair and used it as a whip to whack Kjelle’s arm with, causing them both to laugh as they realized how silly that was to have had happened.

Once she’d curbed her laughter, Kjelle straightened her back as she stood, staring down Severa as she tried to stop laughing as well. “You make a good point, and it’s always a lot better to be working out with someone rather than on your own. Maybe after you’re cleared for the activity we’ll make it a thing to hit the gym together, and I’ll think about reducing costs for you just because I could use the companionship. How about that?”

“That’s better than leaving it at a maybe, I suppose. Still not quite what I was hoping you’d say but it’s something.” Committing their agreement there to memory, Severa watched as Kjelle backed down from her physically intimidating stance, relaxing as she turned to head back towards the other room. “Hey wait, where are you going? Are you going to be spending your time doing couch aerobics again or what?”

“I’m going to go find something that should be around here somewhere, don’t worry. You just think about stuffing your face and don’t focus on whatever I’m doing.” The dismissive tone that Kjelle took on was concerning, but Severa didn’t dwell on it, not when she was too busy thinking about how it was assumed that just because she was in the kitchen and anywhere close to the food it meant that she was going to try and eat it. She didn’t want to draw attention to the fact that she was merely scoping out what was there, because she figured Kjelle would ignore that, but if she was expected to be eating…

She certainly wasn’t going to turn down an opportunity to rummage through cabinets looking for something to satisfy her always-there sweet tooth, that was for certain. The issue there was that this was an apartment belonging to two people who were habitually more health-conscious, so finding anything sugary or delicious was going to be a challenge. At least, Severa figured it would be, but then she opened the fridge and saw not one but two individually-packaged slices of cake sitting on one of the shelves. “Uh, hey, Kjelle?” she called out, not wanting to take something for herself without permission.

“I bought those for you, go right ahead and take them. Wasn’t sure what you’d like so I got what sounded best to me, even if I wouldn’t eat either without a bribe.” Her voice muffled as if she was yelling from inside a box, Kjelle’s answer was enough to get Severa to grab one of the two slices of cake and, after finding a fork and making sure it was clean, she headed to the couch to sit down and eat it.

It was on her way there that she had to stop mid-step and try her hardest not to laugh. It had sounded like Kjelle was speaking from in a box because, as Severa now knew, she was indeed half-in a box right outside the hall closet in the apartment. “ _Gawds_ , what are you doing in there? Digging for buried treasure?” she asked as she continued on with heading towards the couch, sitting down on it and wincing as it groaned under her.

“It’s kind of like buried treasure, that’s for certain. I just—oh damn it I better not have ripped that—have to get it out of here in one piece.” Kjelle was tossing things out of the box as she found them, pulling out old folders and what looked like yearbooks (one of those might have been what she had hoped not to have ripped), but she didn’t emerge from the box until she had a picture frame in her hand. After putting everything back inside the box, she carried the frame with her over to the couch, sitting down next to Severa and angling her treasure so that no one could see what it contained. “You’ll never guess what I’ve got.”

“Knowing you, and knowing what I saw come out of that box, it’s probably a picture of us from our school days. And if you think I’m interested in seeing that—“ Her reply was stopped when Kjelle turned the frame to show her what it contained, and rather than continuing on she shoveled a large bite of cake into her mouth to keep herself silenced.

“If you didn’t think I didn’t keep this around, you’d be crazy. Always had to have some reminder of my first girlfriend, even when I was moving to a new place every few months. Not to sound weird or anything, but wanting to reconnect with you was something that really drove me to come back.” Kjelle jostled the picture frame, watching as Severa’s eyes followed it intently. “Because we never really broke up, we just…stopped being together because I was some side-thing and you weren’t really in love with me, I figured, hey, maybe if I come back and try again, maybe things will be different.”

As Severa was intentionally keeping her mouth full with the cake she was holding, Kjelle continued speaking, looking wistfully down at the picture she was holding. “I didn’t think I’d come back to see you married with kids, and doing that reminded me that I didn’t actually matter to you back when we ‘dated’. You just wanted to know what it was like to be with a girl, and I was so desperate to be loved that I let you use me like that. Bet you wouldn’t have done that if you knew I’d still love you a bunch years later, would you?”

“I didn’t know you loved me then,” Severa choked out, trying not to sound rude as she still had cake in her mouth. “I just thought you wanted to try out the dating thing.”

“Why would I have wanted to just try it out? Seriously we all knew I was into girls and you acted like you were just as into me as you were into Brady, it seemed like it was a good match at the time.” Inhaling deeply, Kjelle set the frame down and flicked the glass, hitting right on her face in the picture. “You pretended to be happy with me, and I was so much in love with you that I didn’t even mind you had a boyfriend, I thought it would work out how it was meant to in the end. But did it?”

The silence that fell over them was one meant for Severa to think about and ultimately answer the question she’d been given. But she was more focused on finishing her slice of cake as slowly as she could that she was on answering anything, especially not a question as loaded as that one. While she ate, she thought about how she could possibly answer that without looking like a fool, or without saying something she’d instantly regret, but the more thought she put into her answer the more she realized that she wasn’t sure if everything had gone how it was meant to.

She knew that she was in love with her husband, and that she wouldn’t trade being married to him for anything, and she knew that she loved her daughters, but was that what life had meant for her? As she finished eating, she felt herself staring more and more at the picture, noting just how happy her and Kjelle both looked in it as they sat, her in her friend’s lap long before there was a huge physical difference between the two of them. They looked similar, both with huge grins as they sat together, both of them with their long hair done in high ponytails that they did for each other while they were in their relationship.

“I…don’t know if it did or not,” she finally said, swallowing down the last bite of cake. “I mean, it worked out pretty well for me in the end, but maybe not as well for you. Maybe if we’d been together or worked something out between us it would have been better for both of us, and we wouldn’t be sitting here having this conversation.”

“You’re not happy with him, don’t lie to yourself.” The words were chilling as they came from Kjelle’s mouth, because she was speaking to Severa about something that Severa didn’t really think much about. “Yeah, clearly he’s good in bed, and I guess you have some kind of romantic connection with him, but he relies on you to do the work, and if not you then it’s his parents. He’s got no spine, he doesn’t do a damn thing himself, and if it wasn’t for the fact that you keep popping out his kids I think he’d have left you due to how much pressure you put on him for him to actually work!”

“H-hey now, I wouldn’t say I’m not happy with Brady! I’m just, you know, frustrated with him that he’s such a lazy and unmotivated bastard that he not only let us lose our place, but that he made us move back in with his parents and then proceeded to not bother with getting a job.” Severa paused, her eyes shifting up to see that Kjelle was looking at her expectantly, as if there was something she was supposed to jump to next. “I’m just saying, I love the guy, but he needs to learn to step up. He’s needed to for years. Is that what you want me to say?”

“I didn’t _want_ you to say anything. Do you think I want to sit here and hear my friend talking negatively about the man she’s been married to for years? Hell no, I just wanted to vent my personal frustrations about all this. That’s all.” Her lips moving into a smile, Kjelle looked down at the picture in her lap once more. “I just wanted to talk about how cute you were back when we were younger and you were my girlfriend and how I’m upset that chance wasn’t really a chance at all.”

“I’d say it was a chance, and I chose him over you because I’d already been with him when we hooked up and I didn’t want to break his heart.” Under her breath, Severa added, “Although now that I think about it, maybe I should have,” but she stood up and headed to take her trash to the kitchen before Kjelle could react to it and pull her back into the conversation with something else.

In the minute she was up, Kjelle had also gotten up to put the picture away, and she was back in her exact same spot, watching Severa’s every step intently until they were both on the couch together once more. “Don’t think I didn’t hear what you said,” she told Severa, waggling a finger at her. “You’re regretting what you’re involved in and you need to come to terms with it, and quick. How are you going to get out once you have two kids to raise?”

“I’m not going to get out, and I’m not planning on it. You know that I’m not going to leave him, being married’s a lifelong thing and even if he’s not the perfect guy I’d hoped he’d turn into, I can’t exactly bail out on him.” Resting her hand on her cheek, Severa tapped her fingers as she decided how to word what else she needed to say. “I mean, my mom constantly arrests my dad and they’re still married, why would I leave Brady just because he’s a pretty shitty father? I wouldn’t, not when he hasn’t done anything wrong.”

“He made you lose your apartment you’d had since you were sixteen,” Kjelle reminded her, “and he tied you down and got you pregnant. Twice. I know you well enough to know that those are all wrongs in your book.”

The finger-tapping continued as Severa considered Kjelle’s words. “The marriage thing was actually my idea, which was stupid but I was lonely and needed someone to come live with me, and there wasn’t anyone else who was going to share that bed with me. The other parts, yeah, those are wrongs that I guess he forced on me. If only slightly.”

“Next you’re going to say that you’re actually okay with him being a deadbeat dad, and I’m going to look you straight in the eyes and tell you that no, you’re not. You’re being complacent and you need to remember who you are, Severa!” Kjelle slammed a fist down on the couch cushion, making the springs creak beneath her hand. “You’re an independent woman who never wanted a man to tie her down and make her be a housewife! And what, exactly, is it that Brady’s done? He’s tied you down and make you a housewife!”

“He has _not_! I’m the one who chose to quit my job as a ‘fuck you’ to him, he didn’t do anything to me to make me want to do that!” Throwing her head back in frustration, Severa had to take a moment of deep breathing to keep herself from getting too worked up over this. She wasn’t even sure what the point of all this was anymore, it was just becoming a conversation of ragging on Brady and while it was cathartic to her she felt that continuing on with it wasn’t in her best interest. “Listen, if you want to talk shit about my husband, that’s cool, but please don’t make me take part in it. I shouldn’t be saying bad things about Chelena’s dad when she can definitely hear me saying them.”

“I doubt she’ll care about any of this, she’s just a baby. She likes hearing your voice and that’s all she cares about right now.” Even with saying that, Kjelle respected that Severa had hit her boundary on the topic and wasn’t going to continue on, so she found something else to talk about. “But anyway, sorry to go where we went there. I was just venting about how I still really like you in a not-friend way and it turned into some really negative stuff.”

The apology seemed like it wasn’t entirely genuine, but as Severa wasn’t expecting to get one at all she was taken by surprise to hear it. “Oh, well, I understand, I guess. We never gave you closure with those feelings and you kept them bottled up for years, it’s only fair that you hold a grudge against who you feel took me from you.”

“He already had you when I got you, it was me taking you from him. And trust me, I respect that you’re his and you’re not leaving him. I don’t have any intentions of taking you away from him.” There were still doubts on the sincerity of what Kjelle was saying, but it was being spoken in such a pleasant voice that Severa felt herself accepting the statement for what it was. That was why it was so surprising when, in the same tone, a suggestion was made: “I wouldn’t complain if you ever got around to giving me that closure, though. Even if it was a quick thing. I wouldn’t mind. And he wouldn’t either.”

“Are you crazy?” Snapping out of the mode of acceptance quickly, Severa shot a wide-eyed look at Kjelle, who shrugged. “You’re really sitting here asking me to cheat on him, just so you can get your moment of closure. I can’t believe this.”

“It’s not really cheating, not if we’re the only ones who know about it. Besides, we’re friends and you know how I feel, if you were to do it it’d be just for me and that’s all it would be. It’s not like we’re, say, outside a crowded theater where hundreds of people can watch.” Her reference to the entire issue that they had with Inigo was enough to get Severa to let her jaw drop a bit as she connected the dots of what was happening here. “See, that? That was cheating, that was on display and inexcusable. This, this would be you helping a friend out after she’s been waiting for years. It’s two different things.”

Even still, Severa was unconvinced. “It’s still cheating, if I touch you in any kind of romantic way right now. Or if you touch me,” she added, looking at how Kjelle was inching to reach towards her, “it doesn’t matter which one of us instigates it.”

“Okay, okay, I can see your point, I guess. Don’t know why you have to go as far as not letting me even touch you, but I’ll respect it.” Nodding, Kjelle gave a small smile towards Severa, who sighed in return. “Now what’s up? We had time to let me get things off my chest, now why don’t you go ahead and get bigger things off your bigger one?”

“Things like that are why I’m sighing, I hope you know. I thought coming over here was going to just be a day of fun, not a day of me being forced to put up with you rehashing all your romantic issues and your actual love for me.” Not even watching as that smile faded, Severa brought herself to her feet and headed for the kitchen once more. “You’re stressing me out, and when I get stressed in the vicinity of sweets, I want them. I’m eating that other piece of cake now, and you can’t stop me.”

Kjelle didn’t even try stopping her, staying seated in a silence that had her watching Severa’s every motion for the next several minutes. She would occasionally open her mouth to say something, but would shut it when she’d remind herself of what had been said, not wanting to cause any more problems than she already had. As she watched, she could feel enough words to fill entire books building up in her mind, all the different things she could easily say and cause a scene with, but she kept them hidden away simply because she understood and respected that she might have gone too far with what she’d said already.

Her silence did not go unnoticed. “Glad to see you finally learned to stop talking about things I don’t want to deal with,” Severa commented, while in between bites of cake. “I didn’t know how much more of your romantic pressure I was going to be able to sit through before walking out of here. It’s good that you know how to listen when I’ve had enough, because I don’t think I could survive the walk home in this heat.”

“I would have offered you a ride, even if you would have turned it down,” Kjelle replied, her eyes still locked on what Severa was doing. “It wouldn’t have been right for me to make you walk home, even if it was my fault that I got a bit too excited about my opportunity to actually talk this all through with you.”

“Still don’t know how you thought you were going to get anything out of that conversation except maybe a pat on the back for respecting boundaries.” Setting her fork down in the container with the cake, Severa brought that hand to right above Kjelle’s shoulder, giving the air a few pats before returning to what she’d been doing. “There, speaking of that pat on the back, you got it. Good job understanding that I’m married and not going to give you what you want, no matter how much you ask.”

“I’m just saying, it was worth a shot to try. I wasn’t going to know if you were weak-willed or not unless I tried. Not like you haven’t cheated on him before, though.” She was glared at for the wording she picked, leaving her backpedaling to try and correct her meaning. “He was aware of us being together at the time, I got that, but it was still technically cheating on your part whenever you were knowingly with me.”

“Okay, and? Why do you bring that up?” Severa was hesitant to have asked that, but the hear of what she’d unlocked only grew when she saw the almost smug look appear on Kjelle’s face before she gave her answer.

“He doesn’t know you’re here with me today, and as long as he never knows…well, I don’t know. I wouldn’t tell a single soul what you did here, and you’re pretty big on keeping things secret from him.” Kjelle shrugged, as if her suggestion wasn’t something bad that she was wrapped up on. “But that’s just me being hopeful, I guess. Don’t mind what I’m saying.”

Pursing her lips together for a moment before she spoke, Severa said, “Oh trust me, I wish I could ignore every word coming out of your mouth right now. I thought we were going to come here and have a day of fun and me blowing off work and all that, not a day of me listening to you try and seduce me.”

“Then let’s get back to that? I’ll stop the talks and we can go find something to do that isn’t sit around here and be open to conversation. Anywhere in particular you want to go?” The ending was forced, and Severa knew deep inside that this wasn’t the actual end to what had been happening, but it was a good enough transition that she accepted it for what it was and played into it. Rather than staying there at the apartment, they went out and walked around the emptier parts of town for a few hours, looking at shuttered stores and empty parks that were abandoned due to all the commotion downtown.

They spent more time than they realized being out, to the point that Severa looked at her phone and noticed it was getting rather close to the time she should have been heading home, and just as Kjelle was going to make the offer to take her back she remembered something she had honestly forgotten. “My work clothes! They’re still by your front door! If I get home wearing this,” Severa gestured to the outfit she’d been wearing since she escaped her house, “they’re going to immediately assume I ditched work, and we can’t have that. You’ll help me out here, right?”

“For a price,” Kjelle mumbled under her breath, not audible to Severa, but then she raised her voice to say, “Yeah, of course I will! What else are friends for, you know? You had to put up with what I did earlier, it’s only fair I help bail you out of this.”

“Take me back for my clothes, and never speak of how you tried bullying me into getting romantic with you again, and I think we have ourselves a deal.” Severa was certain she wouldn’t get that second part, but she felt like throwing it out there anyway. There wasn’t any comment made on it, which was promising, but when they got back to the apartment and both got out of the car to head in for as long as it would take to bend down and pick up discarded clothes and go throw them back on, it seemed their stay was going to be made longer from the moment they got in. As Severa was grabbing her clothes, Kjelle was playing with locking the door behind them, despite it being unnecessary with how short their stay in the place was going to be.

She then proceeded to stand in the middle of the room, on her phone, the entire time Severa was changing, and once it was time to leave there was, naturally, something that prevented them from doing so. “Hey, Gerome says he’s almost here, and I can’t quite get the lock on the door to latch properly, so we’re just going to wait for him to get back before I take you home, if that’s okay,” Kjelle said, backing up towards the door to keep Severa from trying to fix the lock herself. “I mean, I could easily muscle it closed, but I don’t think it’ll reopen if I do that, and I can’t lock us out.”

“Of course something’s got to keep us here and keep me from getting home when I should. How didn’t we expect this to happen? Next you’ll say that it was working fine all day until right now, won’t you?” The shrug that Kjelle gave her was enough evidence to prove her point that it made her walk towards her friend at the door, hand outstretched to try the handle and lock for herself.

“Hey now, don’t believe me that it won’t lock?” She grabbed Severa’s arm at the wrist and held it tightly, before pulling her closer to where she stood and wrapping that arm behind her, not letting go of it. “You don’t have to touch it yourself, knowing you you’ll only manage to make it worse. So I guess we’ll take this opportunity to hug it out, won’t we?”

Severa’s eyes narrowed as she pieced together what was happening. “I’m pretty sure the lock’s just fine and you wanted an excuse to hold me like this, but whatever. One hug won’t hurt too much.” She wrapped her other arm around Kjelle’s side, turning her head so that she wouldn’t see whatever joyous expression her friend was now wearing. “Just don’t let this linger too long, I don’t have much more time to spend here.”

“Oh, it’ll last as long as I know you want it to. It’s probably been a while since someone held you so closely, and I bet it’s been even longer since someone did this.” The thing she was referring to was dragging Severa with her as she moved from close to the door, finding no issue in moving the other woman while they held each other as they did. The act earned her a few shocked gasps from Severa, but no biting complaints. “See, you’re loving being in the arms of someone who really cares about you for you, and you’re too scared to admit to it because of everything else going on in your life.”

“That’s not true at all, I’m seeing this merely as a hug between friends that’s lasting far too long.” Still looking away, Severa was squeezing her eyes closed as she tried resisting saying anything that would potentially bring harm to herself, given that she was in a position with zero control. And after Kjelle’s phone started buzzing in her pocket, which sent vibrations through both of them, she was done with the entire situation. “Okay, you can let go of my arm and end this stupid hug,” she said, reopening her eyes with a drawn-out roll. “I’m tired of it and you’re starting to do that thing where you lean into me and make it weird.”

Before Kjelle could say anything to the contrary, the sound of the door opening filled the air, and Severa turned her head to see what was going on (fearing that it was someone trying to break in with the unlocked door, despite her knowing it was probably Gerome). She didn’t make it past meeting Kjelle face on, as she quickly was thrust into an unwanted and unintentional kiss on her part, explaining why it felt like she had been being leaned into.

“Uh, did I interrupt something?” Gerome asked from the doorway, being witness to the kiss that ended as quickly as it started, Severa screaming loudly enough to drown out his question while Kjelle gave a victorious laugh. He took both of their reactions in, shaking his head at them. “Whatever it is, I think you made a bad impression on my new friend here.”

Having turned bright red with anger at what she’d been roped into, Severa finally managed to look towards him and his companion, who seemed to be someone familiar to her but she couldn’t place where it was she’d seen her before. She was unable to say anything, however, because she was sure her next words were going to be curses at everyone involved with what had just happened to her.

There shouldn’t have been a kiss, there shouldn’t even have been such close hugging, and she was hoping that everyone who was there for it would just keep their mouths shut about it, because she was definitely not on board for anything relating to it. She didn’t even say anything to Kjelle about it on the awkward ride home, because they both knew what had happened and didn’t need to rehash it. Kjelle’s parting words, once they were outside the stately house on the good side of town, were nothing more than salt in the wound that Severa was going to have to be nursing for a while: “What happened there wasn’t anything I expected, or even really wanted after you turned me down again. But what did we say? It’s only cheating if there’s an audience, or something like that? I took advantage of the moment I was given, and now what happens is out of our hands, isn’t it?”

Unable to reply without possibly causing enough of a scene to get attention from someone inside the house, Severa merely slammed the car door on Kjelle and headed up to the front door of the house. She hadn’t really just let that happen, not after how hard she’d been trying to prevent exactly what had transpired. At least, in her mind, she knew that she was completely innocent in the kiss, and that was going to be her defense when it ever got brought up to her again, or _if_ it ever did. She really, truly hoped anyone else who knew what happened would know to keep their mouths shut about it.


	8. In The Wrong(?)

Nothing came of those events for several days, something that Severa was thankful for as it gave her time to think about how she’d handle it getting brought up to her if it ever did. She was going to stand her ground, make sure it was known nothing was done with her permission, and if the person confronting her about it didn’t believe her, she’d remind them that she was definitely happily married and would never dream of cheating on her husband while with his child. She wasn’t the kind of person to start cheating at random, and if she was going to do it she certainly would have picked a better time for it.

And, if all else failed, she would throw out the cheating allegation she’d been clinging to for a long time and hope that people would forgive her in exchange for taking their aggression out on Inigo, because he deserved it more than she did. He willingly cheated on his wife in front of a crowd, while she was unintentionally kissed by someone who’d been baiting her all day. If anyone was in the wrong here it was him, not her, and if people were going to treat her badly over this, if it got out to others, she was going to try her hardest to get people on his case about what he’d done instead.

But she couldn’t spend her entire time dwelling on what had happened, and she needed to immerse herself in what good things she had around her before anything had the chance to go bad. That was how, one morning when she was awoken by Lunabel as the girl tried sneaking out of the room to go do whatever she wanted in the house, she came up with the idea of going out for a walk as the small family they were. She shook Brady awake, him stirring and looking at her with worry as soon as he was fully awake. “What’s up, Sev? Everything okay? Do we need to get goin’ somewhere, or…?”

“ _Gawds_ no, don’t think I’m waking you up for anything bad this time. We’ve still got a while before I even want to worry about that.” Severa could see the look of relief on Brady’s face as that momentary worry faded from his mind, and she felt relieved as well about it. It was only mid-July, and the expected due date for the child wasn’t until late September, which seemed so far away in her mind yet when she looked at herself and her gigantic stomach it felt like it was right around the corner. Shaking all those thoughts away, she continued, “I was just thinking, maybe we could head to the park before it gets super hot and we could spend some quality family time together. Just you, me, and Luna.”

“Oh, so Luna’s in on this?” He sat up from where he’d been laying and saw that his daughter was curled up at the end of the bed, clinging to one of her toys tightly and talking to herself about it. “Well I suppose we could do that, but don’t ya need to work today? Won’t that cut this whole walk thing short?”

She grimaced as she realized this was when she was going to have to come clean about a certain thing she’d done. “Actually, about that…” She looked at his face for a second, him squinting his eyes as he tried making assumptions of what she was going to say, before her gaze fell on her stomach once more. This was a lie she’d known she was going to have to admit to, but it didn’t mean she was going to tell the full truth. “The managers at work figured I should stop working so I’m not, you know, overworking my poor body and all that. So nope, no more work for me.”

“You don’t have a job anymore?” Brady’s voice wavered as he asked, something that she figured would happen when this topic was breached. She nodded, and he took in a deep breath, the following sigh long and drawn-out as he collected himself. “I should’ve known it was gonna come to this at some point, but damn it Sev now I feel really bad about not havin’ one myself. When we get back from our walk, I’m callin’ up Ma and making sure I get somethin’ set up that’ll earn us some money while you’re not workin’. How long do they want you out for?”

“Er, for…ever?” Severa glanced back at him to see the jaw-drop he gave at her revelation, and despite feeling horrible because this was her idea that she was painting as being thrust on her by someone else, she gave her explanation. “You see, they want me to focus on being a good mom to my babies, that’s all. When they’re older maybe I’ll go back, but I guess having two young children is two too many for them to want me to be working.”

“Sev, how’re we gonna ever move back into our own place if it’s just me workin’? We could barely do it the first time, and that was with me havin’ a real job!” Sounding distraught as he faced these facts, Brady brought his hands to his face as he shook his head. “I don’t know how we’re gonna make this work out this time, and I don’t know if my parents are gonna be okay with us livin’ here for the long term.”

“Well, it’s either here or on the streets, because there’s no way we’d ever move in with my parents, easy as that.” Pulling herself out of bed so that she could get ready for their walk, Severa made sure to not look at the mirror or even back at Brady while she was changing, not wanting to be distracted while in a vulnerable state. Once she was dressed, however, she had her face right in the mirror, looking at how tired her eyes seemed to be, and how her face was starting to show signs of the stresses she’d been putting herself through, with work and now with her little secret she couldn’t tell anyone. After a bit of staring at herself, she felt Brady come up behind her, him wrapping himself around her so that his hands were resting on her stomach. “Oh, hello there, why are you on me like this?”

“Is there a problem with a guy wantin’ to get a hug on his wife sometimes? Figured you’d rather me not do this while we were out, so I took the chance while I had it.” He brushed her long, loose hair over one of her shoulders so he could lean his face down into hers, gently kissing her cheek while she looked at his reflection in the mirror alongside hers. “I don’t know what you’re doin’ over here, but I want you to know that I think you’re gorgeous now, just like you’ve always been.”

“Thanks, I suppose?” She wasn’t sure how she was supposed to take that, or how she wanted to, so she just let him do what he wanted. They eventually got Lunabel ready to go out, and after mother and daughter spent time making sure their hair was taken care of and looked nice, the three of them set out to the closest park to the house for a short walk. It was still early enough in the day that the sun wasn’t shining too brightly on them, meaning the air wasn’t as heavy and hot as it would be in a few short hours, but the downside to that was that the park seemed to be busier than normal.

“Mama, can I play?” Lunabel asked, tugging on her mom’s hand as she was walking between her parents, holding onto both of them so that she could swing their arms occasionally as they walked. “I wanna pla-a-ay!”

“We’re not here to play, we’re here to walk,” Severa replied, not wanting to trudge through uneven grass to get to the playground, just to inevitably have to watch her child get stuck somewhere high on the equipment that neither her nor Brady could easily reach. “You can play some other time, okay?”

The girl had barely given her sad “okay” in return before Brady was contradicting what had just been said. “No, we can go play if ya want to, Luna. It’s not every day that we come out and do this, with it havin’ been so hot lately, so I think you deserve it.”

“You’re taking her to the playground then, I’m not doing it.” Letting go of her daughter’s hand to prove her point, Severa gave Brady a look showing how serious she was before he and Lunabel started towards the playground, leaving her alone on the walking path. Since she wasn’t going to walk away from them on her own, she found the nearest bench and sat down on it, choosing to people-watch rather than do what she’d wanted to do by coming out to the park. With how many families like theirs were out at this time of day, it was easy for her to get lost in watching strangers interacting with their children, watching them take the time to do what the kids wanted rather than what they wanted.

After the fourth or fifth family she saw walking by, the kids talking endlessly to their parents about their own interests and the parents intently listening, Severa felt herself start feeling like she’d really failed as a parent towards Lunabel. Why had she always put herself first when it came to anything, never caring about what her daughter wanted if it wasn’t something she wanted to do as well? She’d always chosen to get upset with the girl if she was being a nuisance, and while there had been times that she had deserved punishment there were many others that the issues could have been solved had they just sat down together and talked it out. While her mind dwelled on this, she could feel the movement of the other child inside her, which conflicted her feelings further; how was she going to redeem herself as a parent to Lunabel if she was just going to have to start focusing on Chelena instead?

“Since when did I become a half-rate version of my own mother?” she asked herself, leaning forward as much as she could to rest her arms on top of her stomach. “Neglectful, never caring what the kid wants, always putting myself first…at least my mother had the decency to stop after me.” She looked towards the playground, where she could see Lunabel at the top of a slide and Brady looking scared for his life as he stood beside it. “He might not be the best at parenting, but he definitely shows he cares more than I do.”

She sighed, her thoughts growing more jumbled by the second. There were so many things wrong with them as a couple, and as a family, but this was the life she’d chosen when she’d asked him to marry her that one spring day, and she couldn’t escape it even if she tried. She loved her husband and she loved her daughters, she wasn’t going to leave them, no matter what happened. That was an assurance she’d been making to herself since the day at Kjelle’s apartment, when she’d been forced to face all the things wrong with her marriage and yet hadn’t given up on it, and now she was certain she wanted to stick with what she’d signed up for before she knew what it would really mean.

So after watching them play for a little bit, seeing Lunabel come flying down the slide over and over again and Brady jumping to catch her every time, she decided that it would be best to put what she wanted to the side and do what they wanted for a change. The grass was exactly as uneven as she feared it would be, and it felt like she was going to stumble and fall multiple times as she walked through it, but when she made it to the playground’s edge she saw two surprised faces staring back at her. “What happened to you not doin’ this?” Brady asked her, seeing that she was looking determined due to what she’d done to join them. “I could’ve sworn ya said you weren’t gonna do this.”

“I changed my mind,” she said with a smile, holding an arm out for Lunabel to run towards, so she could wrap her daughter up in the best hug she could manage. “Seeing all the happy and functional families made me want to try and make us one of those for a change. Is that fine with you?”

“Of course it’s fine with me, I was just wonderin’ what got into you to get you to come over here. Never saw you walk with such determination before.” He smiled at her, watching the embrace come to an end as Lunabel decided she wanted to go down the slide again. “Or maybe it wasn’t determination. You have been walkin’ kind of funny lately, so maybe it was somethin’ to do with that.”

She didn’t let his brutal honesty faze her, although it was hard to not flinch at the truth in his words. “Yeah, let’s just go with it being about my determination to join you two, I don’t like thinking about how weird my walk is when I’m pregnant. I _know_ I’ve got a lot of belly to accommodate in my step, we’ve gone over this many, many times.”

“Yeah, you’re right, sorry ‘bout that.” He turned away from her to watch as Lunabel made her way up the playground equipment to get to the top of the slide once more, and so when Severa nestled herself up against him he wasn’t expecting it. He also wasn’t expecting how she let her hand rest on his lower back, before moving it slowly downward until he had to jump forward, not just to catch Lunabel as she came down the slide but to get out of the reach of a hand that was pinching him. “Whoa there, Sev, we’re on a playground! What’re you thinking, no one around here wants to see that!”

“I thought it was fitting payback for what you’d said,” she told him, smirking as he playfully glared back at him. They stood there by that slide for a little while, as Lunabel was enamored with going down it over and over again, but when she grew tired of playing on it they set back out on the walk that had been the reason for coming out in the first place. By then, the sun was heating everything up to the point of being nearly unbearable, which should have told them to start heading back home. “I don’t think I want to go home quite yet,” Severa said once she had one of Lunabel’s hands held tightly in hers, Brady holding onto the other one. “There’s still something else I want to do while we’re out walking like this.”

“Okay, well, whatever it is, do ya think you can make it a quick thing? I don’t want to keep Luna out while it’s so hot, and I don’t think you should be out in this heat either. Might make ya more tired quicker.” His concerns were valid, and he looked at her knowingly as he spoke them, but the innocent look she gave him in return wasn’t what he expected from it. “What’s goin’ on now, huh? You already dropped the news that you’re not workin’ anymore, now what’re ya going to tell me?”

This was a moment she’d been dreaming about for a long time, suggesting to right a wrong she was completely aware they’d caused what seemed like forever ago. “I want to get married again, have a real wedding with our parents involved and with the girls there to be part of it,” she said in one long breath, not pausing until her last word had been given. Much like her grab from earlier, this caught Brady by surprise and he was stammering as he tried to come up with some response. “No, don’t say anything right now unless you’re down for this. I just thought, after so long and after having two kids together, maybe having a real wedding would be for the best.”

“I don’t know where you got this thought from, but if it’s somethin’ you really would be interested in, I’m sure we could talk to my parents and see if they’d be down for helpin’ us out with it. Ma might not like you all that much, but makin’ you happy would make her grandbabies happy, and she loves them more than anything.” Brady looked down at Lunabel between them, as she walked unaware of the conversation her parents were having beside her. “Say, Luna, would you like goin’ to another wedding?”

“No way,” the girl replied, tilting her head back to stare up into her father’s face. She kept giving the same answer as they explained what a wedding was, and that she’d been to one not even a year before, but the moment they mentioned cake she was changing her tune to being on board for the idea.

“That’s something our first wedding didn’t have,” Severa said with a laugh, thinking back to the secret ceremony they’d put together underneath their parents’ noses. “Not a single slice of cake for any of us. We’ll definitely have to fix that when we get our redo.”

“It’s not even an _if_ now, it’s a _when_ , huh?” Brady smiled at the idea, enjoying how happy Severa seemed to be about it. “Guess that’s another reason I’ve gotta get back to workin’, so that once we get to have this we can go back to livin’ on our own and tryin’ the real adult thing all over again.”

They continued discussing the idea of this second wedding for the rest of their walk, minus the parts where Lunabel would find something on the path to catch their attention with. They’d had to stop for a variety of bugs, and each ended up with a few weeds in their hands that she insisted they pick and carry with them, but it was making the girl excited to see how happy her parents were to play along with her, and they weren’t going to squash her excitement like that, not when it was as contagious as it was. That changed, however, as they headed back towards the house, walking up the street showing them a scene that was strange at best. When they’d left, neither Chrom nor Maribelle had been home, and the only car outside was the one belonging to Severa; now, as they returned, there were multiple vehicles of varying levels of fanciness, one striking Severa as suspicious the moment she saw it.

“Why the hell is Kjelle’s car in front of your parents’ house?” she asked Brady, hoping he’d have an answer for her that would make her feel less worried about what it could have meant. “And why does it look like both your parents came home while we were gone?”

“We weren’t out that long, and today’s not an important day, far as I’m aware. Maybe one of her folks wanted to meet one of mine for a lunch meeting, and they borrowed her car for it?” The suggestion immediately sounded stupid to Brady, as it didn’t make sense for why that would have happened, so he tried to throw out a different one. “Or maybe she ended up needin’ legal advice from Ma and came to her privately? Doesn’t explain why both my parents are home, but it’s a start…”

The feeling of worry was only building inside of Severa, as she realized there was really only one explanation for why Kjelle was at the house, and she had been dreading this moment since she knew it could happen. She wasn’t going to stop their approach to the house to explain things to Brady, so she hoped that she would be given the opportunity when they got inside. The best case scenario, she knew, was that she would have the chance to say her side of everything before accusations flew, and that was only if Kjelle was painting her as guilty in what had happened. Maybe their old friendship would have given her some kind of conscience in regards to approaching this situation.

As they walked by the other strange car in front of the house, both Severa and Brady looked in its windows to see if they could find any answers as to who it belonged to. Nothing inside struck Severa as familiar, but Brady was able to recognize a name or two on some of the papers scattered on the seats of the car. “This is Ma’s friend Ricken’s car, I’m pretty sure. Which doesn’t make any sense, why would he be here when he’s normally doin’ my dad’s dirty work?”

He hadn’t heard the soft “oh _shit_ ” that Severa had given at his use of the owner’s name, but he certainly heard when she coughed and said, “So, like, the guy whose stuff is in this car, you know who his kid is, right?” There wasn’t even time for him to process the question before Severa stopped dead in her tracks, pointing at Kjelle’s car that was parked right behind her own. “She is, dipshit. Something’s going on here that she dragged her dear daddy into, and I don’t know if I want to know what it is.”

“Er, why’re ya lookin’ so panicked right now, Sev? Is everything okay?” He was looking at her rather than the car, knowing that she was referring to Kjelle but was more focused on how she seemed to be shaking a bit. “Do we need to go anywhere? I can run in and get Ma or someone to watch Luna if we need to get you somewhere…”

“I don’t need to get anywhere—“ she let go of Lunabel’s hand and started towards the door, determined to set things straight as fast as she could, “—except inside the house, right now. You don’t have to follow me, don’t worry.”

By the time she was at the door, he’d processed that whatever was making her upset was something to do with who was inside the house, and he was making Lunabel run as he caught up with her. “Why wouldn’t I follow you? Isn’t that the married couple thing to do, get into problems together and work through them side by side?”

“No, you don’t understand, I don’t want you here for this.” She bit her lip as she thought of how he could interpret that, so she quickly added, “Mostly because you have Luna with you, and I definitely don’t want her hearing what’s going to be said.”

“Come on, Sev, what’s the worst that’s going to happen when we go inside?” He didn’t give any suggestions and she was scared to give her own, because the moment she gave one he’d be able to suspect what was eating at her. “Let’s just get in there and see what all this is about, huh? Bet you’re worryin’ about nothing.”

They opened the door together, her shaking hand under his sturdy one, but they got the door open a matter of inches before someone on the other side yanked it the rest of the way, an act followed immediately by a spindly finger pressing its way into Severa’s face. “How _dare_ you think you can re-enter my house after what you’ve done,” Maribelle hissed, sounding downright livid. “I can’t even begin to put my thoughts on this to words, that’s how badly you’ve screwed up this time.”

“Maribelle, please, whatever you’ve heard, it’s not—“

“Ma? Why are ya treatin’ her like this? You’ve gotten so good about not wantin’ to constantly kick her out. What’s gotten into you now?” Brady was unaware of it, but him asking that question was paving the way for Maribelle to completely lash out at Severa, something that it was clear she wanted to do.

“It’s nothing that’s gotten into me, my dear. You can go ask your father about this if you want the gentle version, because what I am about to say is far from gentle or delicate.” Her finger hadn’t moved in the entire time she was speaking, Severa’s eyes crossing as she stared at it in fear of what was to come. All Brady did in response to his mother was let Lunabel into the house, telling her to go upstairs until everything was settled, and the moment the girl was out of the way Maribelle, her face reddening as her anger boiled over, was ready to attack. “This _whore_ decided it would be appropriate to go around kissing other women behind your back, Brady!”

“She did…what?” He slowly turned to look at Severa to see her reaction, which was to do nothing at all except remain focused on the finger in her face. “You going to defend yourself on this or not, huh Sev?”

She’d rehearsed how she was going to claim her innocence in the matter multiple times in her head, but she’d never once thought about the accusation being something so simple and technically true. The way this always went down in her mind involved her being called a cheater and being asked if she was in love with someone else, both of which were untrue things, but she had, in fact, kissed a woman behind Brady’s back, even if it had been unintentional on her part. “I can’t say that’s wrong, but—“

“Don’t even dare coming up with lies to mask what you’ve done. The fact that I had this brought to my attention by a friend of mine, who’d heard it through a chain of others, makes this all the more disgusting.” Behind Maribelle, three people were standing as witness to the encounter, one of them looking almost as angry as she did, one looking uncomfortable for being there, and the other trying her hardest to get Severa’s attention for herself. “I hope you learn to regret what you’ve done to hurt my son, because he will not be married to you for much longer after this!”

“Ma, please let her get a say in all this before you start jumpin’ to extremes like that!” Raising his voice to a level he rarely ever reached, Brady actually pushed his mother’s hand out of Severa’s face before grabbing her by the shoulders, looking at her with teary eyes. “C’mon now, tell me none of this is true and that someone’s playin’ some sick joke on you right now. I don’t think you’d be stringin’ stories about a second wedding just to turn around and have been cheatin’ on me, but…”

She sighed, her eyes locking with his and brimming with tears as well. “I didn’t cheat on you, don’t worry,” she said, to which Maribelle yelled that she was a liar. “No, really, that’s not how it happened at all! It wasn’t my intention to kiss her, it really wasn’t, but it happened and I thought it’d be forgotten about right away!”

“I told you she’d say that, didn’t I?” Getting right up behind Maribelle, Kjelle looked over her shoulder before saying, “I went that whole day, where she should have been at work but wasn’t, trying to keep her from being all over me, and the moment she got her chance to get at me she did. I didn’t ask for her to kiss me, she just kind of did it. And after saying some nasty things about Brady, too!”

The sincerity in what she was saying was hard to ignore, even though Severa knew almost all of it was lies. But she couldn’t say that about it, not without being accused of lying herself, and she wasn’t going to admit to the ditching work thing while everyone present would assume she was still in denial about the rest of it. “I just can’t believe this, I really thought what we had was the real deal,” Brady muttered, letting go of Severa as if she had suddenly become untouchable. “Why’d you not tell me you weren’t actually in love with me anymore? Why’d you trick me like this?”

“Trust me, I haven’t tricked you at all! This is being taken the entirely wrong way!” All she could do at this point was hope that he’d accept her word over his mother’s, which she figured was close to impossible. “I kissed her, but it wasn’t because I wanted to! She played me like a fucking fiddle to get what she wanted out of me!”

“Why would I _want_ to kiss you when I already have a girlfriend? Not only that, but why would I kiss you in front of that very same girlfriend?” Pushing past Maribelle so that they were standing shoulder-to-shoulder in the doorway, Kjelle now was the one to hold a finger in Severa’s face, looking down her arm menacingly. “You shouldn’t have tried getting with me when you’d had your chance years ago, and to do it like you did really came back and bit you in the ass right here, didn’t it?”

“How can you say these kinds of things right now? You’re the one who manipulated me into kissing you!” Severa felt like screaming to try getting her point across, but this was a losing battle no matter how she looked at it. Somewhere along the line, the innocent and accidental kiss had been warped into some big production that had been spread through gossip until it came to this confrontation, and there was no way she was going to find a way to get anyone to consider her point of view. “Please, just…don’t say I cheated, because I didn’t! I’m not in love with you, Kjelle, and I haven’t been in a very long time!”

“That’s good, because I wouldn’t dare bother with a cheater like you.” Kjelle’s words were cold, but she spoke them with a condescending smirk that made Severa feel like attempting to physically attack her, something she immediately decided against. There was no place for physical violence in this argument, no matter how infuriating it was.

“We’ll work on getting papers taken care of right away, so we can invalidate this marriage like we should have right after it happened,” Maribelle said, extending a hand to her son that he took without a second thought. “It’ll be hard to cope with this sort of betrayal, but don’t worry, Brady dearest, we’ll get through it together. You deserve better than this kind of scum, anyway.”

He glanced at her for a split second, his eyes filled with the pain of what he’d just learned about his wife, but he nodded at his mother’s words. “I just really thought she was the one for me, Ma. Never would’ve thought she’d do this to me.”

The last sight she saw of any of them was his back turned to her, Maribelle’s angered face trying to focus on her son and not the woman that had been with him, and the smirk on Kjelle’s lips that had gone from condescending to showing a tiny hint of regret. As the door closed, she watched that smirk fade completely, replaced with a slightly-open mouth paired with shifting eyes, but she never had the chance to call attention to it. The door was closed with a slam and quickly locked, leaving her outside in the heat of the day with nothing on her but her phone and purse, her car keys, and therefore her car, the one thing she had left to call her own.

Finding a way to handle the fallout of what had just happened was important, but before she could even try to set things straight she needed to find somewhere she could stay while she took care of everything. As quickly as she could, she made her way down to her car and got in it, sitting in the driver’s seat for a second before deciding that getting away from the house was the best thing to do first, so she drove down the street and back past the park she, Brady, and Luna had been walking around not long before. A pang of sadness hit her as she stopped the car, thinking about what this was going to do to Luna. How was she going to have it explained to her that her mother was gone? She didn’t want to become a bad guy in her daughter’s eyes, not when the little girl normally looked at her as if she was the best person in the world.

She was crying by the time she was able to get her mind off her daughter, only to be reminded that Luna wasn’t the only child she needed to worry about in this mess. What was going to happen with Chelena, was she going to be brought into a world without her parents being together? Was she ever going to get to know a normal life? There was still plenty of time before that bridge needed to be crossed, thankfully, and Severa hoped she would have everything put back together before then. But if it didn’t happen…she wanted to be the one who got to keep this child, even if it meant splitting the siblings up permanently.

Her tears picked up in their intensity as she thought about that possibility, not wanting to even consider that it was something that could happen to her family. Just that morning they’d been having lovely conversations about positive things in their future, and now she was genuinely worried about having to raise one of her daughters while she never got to see the other one again. She needed to collect herself before she called anyone asking them for help, hopefully getting to them before this nasty lie about her spread any further than it already had. And that proved to be nearly impossible, especially after she heard someone knock at one of the car’s windows. She looked towards the source of the noise and her jaw dropped when she saw that it was the reason for all the problems herself, looking slightly out of breath as if she’d just ran down to the park.

Motioning for Severa to roll down the window to give her a chance to speak, Kjelle made good use of the tiny sliver of an opening she was given. “I didn’t mean for it to get like this, but I had no choice. Hands were tied, really,” she said, sounding like she really meant her words. “That girl Gerome brought home with him, she ran her mouth off to his parents talking about how much she wished she had a girlfriend like I did, which of course made his dad go running to my mom, who told my dad, who called me to a meeting with Maribelle so I could set things straight. And I had to run with the story they’d been told, which was that you kissed me, not that I kissed you, and—“ She was silenced when the window was rolled back up, Severa not wanting to hear another word of it.

This wasn’t how it was supposed to have gone down, and she knew that she was being fed lies to try and make her forgive Kjelle for what had happened. She knew how the game worked, she wasn’t completely stupid to it, and the last thing she was going to do was give Kjelle the forgiveness she was looking for, just for her to attempt to dupe her into something worse than just a kiss.

So when the knocking moved to the window right next to Severa, she glared through the glass at the redhead on the other side. “Either open it or get out here so we can talk this out like adults,” Kjelle yelled, so that she would be heard inside the car. The temptation was there to do the window thing again, but Severa knew that the street in front of the park was a much better place for a physical confrontation than the front step of the house had been, and if she was given the chance to take a swing here she gladly would.

She wasn’t even entirely out of the car before Kjelle was grabbing her hair, holding onto it much like she would have held onto her arm had she been given access to it. “Let go of me, life-ruiner,” she snapped, trying to jerk her hair out of Kjelle’s reach but failing at it. “I knew from the moment you came back into my life you were going to try doing this, and would you look at this, you went ahead and did it!”

“I didn’t do anything except get wrapped up in your issues and let them spiral out of control,” Kjelle replied, twisting her hand deeper into Severa’s hair to illustrate her point. “If you hadn’t gotten so fixated on someone else cheating, I wouldn’t have decided to see how deep your problems would get. How does it feel, knowing that you’ve done to yourself exactly what you would have done to him?”

“I wasn’t going to go to his parents or his in-laws and ruin his life through them,” she answered, still trying to get out of her grasp but finding that Kjelle’s fingers were far too tangled in her hair to make a real attempt to get away. “You planned this to get back at me for all the hatred I held for Inigo, and you didn’t once think about how bad this would get the moment you let everything happen.”

“Why would I? Getting you out of that marriage means that you’re available, and we both know that the only thing stopping you from being with me was your husband. Now that his mom’s insisting he divorces you, what’s there keeping you from being with me?” Kjelle gave a hard tug on Severa’s hair, making her scream in frustration (not in pain) at her hopeless situation. “You played the game of trying to guilt someone into admitting their cheating, and you lost it. I played it, and I’d say I won, wouldn’t you?”

She shook her head, slightly as she couldn’t move it too much thanks to how much of her hair Kjelle had twisted around her hand. “I’d say you lost, because there’s no way you’re going to get me to _love_ you after all this. Sure, play the ‘oh I was forced to make it sound worse than it was’ card, but it’s not going to make me forgive for you wrecking my marriage and making me lose one, if not eventually both, of my children!”

“You were miserable with him anyway, don’t act like you weren’t.” Using her strength and the position she was currently in, Kjelle pulled Severa as close to her as she could and crouched down to meet her face-to-face. “Trust me, what I’ve done here for you is going to help you in the end. Why waste your time in a worthless marriage when you could be with someone who actually loves you and would support you?”

“Because I love him, maybe? Because I spent the past several years being with him and having his children and never once thinking about what I might have had if I’d been with you instead?” The words were biting, but Severa was on her last nerve with what was happening. She may have once considered Kjelle a friend, but after this she was sure she’d never think that way again. “You ruined my life in an attempt to get me to love you, and you failed that just as badly as I…as I failed at ruining someone else’s life.”

Kjelle laughed loudly, using her hair-free hand to slap her leg as if she’d just heard a hilarious joke. “You don’t know the half of it on that one, my dear. Just you wait until you get to speak with Cynthia about this, she’ll never want to talk to you again thanks to what I might have told her about you and your quest for vengeance.”

“What does she have to do with any of this? Your issue was with Brady and me being together, you didn’t have to involve anyone else.” The attempt to get away started up again, Severa considering jerking her head hard enough to possibly start ripping out her hair, but she gave up when she started tiring herself out over it. “Tell me what you told Cynthia, word for word, none of the lying bullshit you did to convince your parents and Brady’s that I was the one in the wrong.”

“All I told her was that you had been trying to ruin her marriage since the day we met up at the theater, because you didn’t know the difference between a real kiss and a stage kiss. She believed me, which is great, because I told her the absolute truth.” There was something about hearing Kjelle say that the kiss had been fake that made Severa rethink everything starting with the moment she’d been witness to it. Hearing Inigo insist it didn’t mean anything had always felt like he was pushing off the seriousness of his offense, but to hear the other witness say it wasn’t real gave her a new perspective of what had gone down that day. A new perspective that was far too late to be helpful, but a new perspective.

“You let me get wrapped up in that rage on purpose, didn’t you?” she asked, her voice going quiet but picking back up in volume when she saw Kjelle nod. “You intentionally let me steer myself wrong, because you knew you’d be able to use me like this if you did! What kind of person did you become while you were gone?”

“I became someone who wasn’t going to let what I wanted slip out of my grasp again.” Her reply came in time with her finally letting go of the hair in her hand, the long orange locks falling back into their normal place, although much more tangled than before. “But you’re not going to see things my way right now, and I’m going to give you the space you need to sort things out on your own. Just know, if you ever want to turn to me for help,” she leaned into Severa and brushed her lips against her cheek, before finishing with a whisper, “there’s always been a place in my heart and in my bed for you.”

As she backed away, Severa climbed back into her car and made sure the door was closed and locked before she could have any more ideas. In fact, to keep herself from potentially having another bad interaction right there, she put the car in drive and sped off through neighborhood streets until there was no way Kjelle could manage to find her. It was then that she parked and, after crying again for a few minutes, started calling every friend she could think of that would possibly help her out. The problem there was that, if the friend wasn’t someone that Kjelle had already contacted, they were someone related to Brady in some form, and between him and Maribelle they’d gotten word of her so-called cheating out to everyone.

Predictably, everyone, even the normally-reliable Lucina, was hesitant at best to help Severa out, which left her with no choice but to drive to her parents’ house and, after explaining everything to them from beginning to end ask if she could stay with them for a while. Cordelia was disgusted to consider it, but Gaius gave her a little bit of slack and offered up a spot on the couch because her old bedroom was being used as a guest room still. It meant living under the same roof as her mother and as Subaki, but it was somewhere to stay; it could have been somewhere to stay for longer if she was able to tolerate her second cousin’s comments even slightly more than she was, and so after a week of crashing on the couch she was pushed out the front door after punching the man in the face for the second time.

By that point, others had been able to calm down a bit and begin to accept other viewpoints on the whole ordeal, and while Severa wasn’t able to go back to where she belonged because Maribelle was still insistent that there was _no_ other possibility than what she’d already been told, that didn’t mean her boneheaded opinion was accepted by everyone else. However, the one place she would have accepted as a good second option was still impossible to get to, as she found when she called Cynthia asking if she could stay with her. “I…can’t let you right now,” she was told, Cynthia sounding genuinely upset to be having to turn her best friend down like she was. “My mother said that it would be bad for me to spend too much time with you, especially with the baby shower so soon and your, uh, ex-mother-in-law being in attendance for it…”

“Hold on, is this just you rejecting me from coming to stay with you, or is there more to it?” This hadn’t been the first time that the baby shower had been brought up in their conversations post-cheating allegations, but it was the first time that it sounded like Cynthia was barring her from attending it. “Come on, just come clean and tell me.”

“Funny, hearing you tell someone to come clean about something when you’re going to be divorced because you didn’t come clean about anything, but, um, I’ve been told that you’re not allowed to be at the baby shower anymore, because of all this…” Despite this being a phone conversation, Severa could clearly imagine Cynthia’s exact motions as she dropped this news on her, complete with slight shoulder movements and awkward grimacing. “I really wish you could be there! But I can’t let there be fighting or anything like that, and you being there would cause it, and I’m so, so sorry.”

“No, that’s…fine, I deserve it after what I’ve put you and everyone else through.” It was tough to swallow her pride and accept that she had done enough harm to be rightfully excluded from something. “You’ll have to let me know everything after though, I’m still going to want to have some kind of involvement.”

The whine-like groan Cynthia gave at that made Severa’s heart drop, as she was sure she knew what it meant. “No, you don’t understand, I don’t think anyone wants you to be involved at all except for me. I’m sure if Inigo was home right now, he’d be upset that I’m even talking to you, because of how seriously you took your accusations against him, and I don’t think he wants you having anything to do with our child.”

“Yeah, I deserve that too, I guess.” She didn’t really think she did, but she wasn’t going to let herself get upset and start an argument over that. “You have fun with your baby shower and raising your kid without me around, I’ll accept that that’s what’s best here.”

“Don’t worry, Severa, I’ll find a way to get you involved in things, even if it’s behind Inigo’s back. After all, he was stage-kissing girls without telling me he was doing it. I can try to keep secrets from him too.” They shared a laugh after that, both finding something humorous in this horrible mess of a situation they were dealing with, but after the call ended Severa was still left with no place to stay and very few people to turn to.

She did try going to her next-closest friend, but even with a week to cool off Lucina was still siding more with her parents and brother than with Severa, going as far as to say that she felt betrayed than anything like this had happened in the first place. On the other hand, when she contacted Noire as a last-ditch effort, knowing that her attachment to Owain, and Owain’s loyalty to his cousin, would probably cause the attempt to end in failure, they both seemed more than happy to welcome her into their home—on two conditions, naturally.

The first rule was that she didn’t try to talk about Brady or anyone with them, something that hurt her as she knew they’d both have relatively easy contact with him if they wanted to, but she accepted it as it gave her a place to stay. The second rule was that she had to be willing to help out with watching the twins, who were at the stage of crawling around the apartment the family was living in and getting into all sorts of trouble. Since this _was_ Owain and Noire she was dealing with, “helping out” more or less became watching them at all times, which grew harder to do by the day, but she wasn’t going to tell them no and get kicked out of their place.

There were days that the arrangement didn’t work out, with Noire snapping from her kind demeanor to the nasty side that did nothing but lash out at those around her, and it was on those days that Severa found somewhere else to be until going back was safe. For the first few weeks, she’d go to parks or the closest stores and spend her time hanging around there, but there came a point where she grew bored of seeing the same things over and over again when she needed to get out. That was when she attempted to reconnect with others once more, hoping that this time, closing in on a month after the whole ordeal broke out, would be the time people started really forgiving her.

“I can’t say I approve of what happened, but now that I’ve given it some thought and done some questioning, I can say that you didn’t deserve what you’ve been put through over it,” Lucina told her after she finally got through in a call to her. “I’ve tried talking sense into Mother’s thick head, but she’s still adamant on doing things based on her perception of the events, and Brady’s forced to go along with her.”

Hearing her husband’s name and talk of his compliance made Severa’s spirits drop, because she’d been hoping to hear he was rallying against what had been accused. “Is he okay? Does he talk about me at all? Do you know if Luna’s okay, I haven’t gotten to talk to her since this happened.” The questions came all at once, Severa wanting to ask so many things to this first person who’d been willing to discuss the issue with her.

“He speaks of you often, he’s starting to come around to the way I’ve interpreted the events, but he’s too deep in Mother’s grasp to get out on his own. He and Lunabel miss you both, so very much, but there’s nothing either of them can do to see you at this point.” Lucina took in a deep breath, exhaling it slowly before she added, “I’m going to try to make it so they get a chance to see you soon, but it relies on Mother listening to me for a change rather than believing that her perspective is the only right one.”

“How do you know that hers isn’t right?” Severa’s hopes for things changing hinged entirely on what Lucina had done to uncover what she assumed was the truth, and she needed to know what she knew before she could even start to believe that she could do anything.

“I spoke to Kjelle about everything, and she told me the exact chain of events that she put in place to make all this happen. After she was done admitting her guilt and your innocence, I made sure to threaten her with a fair amount of violence if I caught her bothering you again, because doing this to you for her own personal gain was wrong on her part. She concocted a scheme to get you into her life and out of the one you wanted, and it worked up until you rejected her advances once again, and now that you have no one she at least says she feels bad for ruining what you did have. If that’s any consolation, I suppose.” Hearing this reminded Severa that she’d hadn’t bothered trying to contact Kjelle since their alteraction at the park, and that she really shouldn’t try again.

“There’s no promises I’ll ever be able to convince Mother that Kjelle got so many people involved just to dupe her into thinking you’d done something wrong, but I will gladly keep trying for your sake. No one deserves to be in your situation, Severa, and I feel so horrible about having fallen for the lies for even a short period of time.” Lucina sounded genuinely sorry, something that Severa needed to hear right then, and it was from that understanding of who was right and who was wrong that they arranged a way to have Lucina come get Severa any time trouble started brewing in the apartment.

Cynthia, days later, also became a way out, although her offer was a lot more conditional and wasn’t one Severa saw herself taking up often. “So I’ve really been thinking about all this, about how you didn’t want to tell me about cheating because you didn’t want to hurt me and it made you hate Inigo until you found out it wasn’t actually cheating, but by then it’d hurt you too badly to do anything about it, and I think I just can’t be angry at you over it.” The words were assuring to hear, and Severa was about to thank Cynthia for her understanding when she went ahead and tacked on, “However, I don’t know how well either of us trying to see each other’s going to work out when I definitely can’t be driving anymore and you shouldn’t be either. You could ride over here with Inigo, but I don’t know if I want you and him alone in a car together after all this.”

“He didn’t do anything wrong, and I should probably have the chance to apologize to him about what I accused him of. Mind letting me do that one of these days?” They made the agreement to allow for that to happen, but the one time that he did try to come pick her up to take her home with him, she ended up being unable to go due to last-minute child watching she was roped into doing. At least, when he came up to the apartment to get her, she gave him the most heartfelt apology she could manage with two ankle-biters being trapped behind her while she held the door cracked open, and he accepted it, even if he did remark that he’d told her all along she’d been in the wrong.

It seemed that the only people who were still under the impression she’d done something shameful and wrong of her own volition were the people that mattered most, but at least she’d repaired almost every other relationship she’d fractured during her quest for vengenance and its aftermath. But those people who hadn’t forgiven her or started to understand what had happened, they were the most painful ones to still be on the outs with, and so every night she fell asleep wishing she was back in her bed with Brady right next to her and Lunabel sleeping on her own bed in the same room. Friends couldn’t replace family, even if they dulled the ache of missing them.

* * *

The morning Severa woke up to her phone saying that her plan had changed and that she was being charged more for her line because it was the only one left on the plan was a morning she’d been dreading since everything had gone down. She had been hoping that, since it had been a month and a half since the incident, her still paying for Brady’s phone meant that there was a chance that she’d be able to fix things with him, but it seemed that the time for the attempt had passed her by. This was proven to be absolutely true when she tried sending him a text and received one back saying that the number was no longer in service, meaning that not only had Maribelle forced him to change who paid for his phone, but she’d changed his number as well.

“So much for that,” she muttered under her breath, before stretching to really wake herself up. This was a blow to her heart, but it wasn’t going to be the end of the world, especially since it had been so long since they’d last spoken anyway. She was really starting to accept that this had wrecked her marriage and made it unsalvageable, despite her doing nothing wrong at all, and so she tried moving on from it by looking at what else was on her phone. It wasn’t every morning that she woke up to multiple messages from people, and while she’d picked the corporate number to listen to first, she could now move to the voicemail from someone she knew.

“S-Severa? It’s me, Cynthia,” the message started, her friend sounding like she was panicking when she’d tried calling. “I know you’re probably asleep but I don’t know what’s going on and Inigo’s not here and no one else is answering, so I thought asking you to help me out would be best. Call me back, please, it’s really important.”

The message went silent after that, and she sighed, stretching again yet still feeling like she needed to stretch more to get comfortable before she placed the call. Naturally, when she tried calling she didn’t get an answer, so she left a voicemail of her own asking Cynthia what was up and why she wasn’t answering. It was only after she hung up that she saw the message had been from over an hour before, which meant that whatever the problem was, her friend most likely already had it covered.

She sat there on the couch, feeling like she still wasn’t getting comfortable despite changing her position multiple times, waiting for Cynthia to call her back. She spent more time sitting there than she realized she had, because soon Noire was coming out to greet her, one of the twins in her arms while the other crawled behind her. “Oh, you’re awake already,” she said, shocked to see Severa watching her as she came into the room. “I figured I’d have to wake you up for the day. Mind getting yourself ready, so we can go out and run some errands and discuss a few plans I have?”

“Er, yeah I suppose I could do that.” Noticing that Noire and the kids were all dressed already, she tried to make quick work of picking out something to wear from the box of clothes she’d been given to wear when she started living there, but she found that standing felt worse than sitting and laying had, and it took a lot to bend over to dig through the box. The effort made her choose the simplest thing she could find, which was a dress she’d never seen anyone wear before and it looked rather big as she pulled it from the box, but once she went and put it on and saw that it basically fit her perfectly, she hated that she’d mentally compared it to a tent when she first saw it.

Once she was dressed and as ready as she was ever going to be, Noire went ahead and got the stroller ready for pushing her kids around in and they headed out to go walk somewhere; Severa made it a few yards outside before hunching over in pain, her feeling unable to go through with what they were going to do. “You’ve got the car eats for the kids up in your room, why don’t we just use my car to run these errands?” she suggested, clutching her side as she looked up at Noire, who was deep in thought as she considered the suggestion. “I don’t think I’ll make it if we’re walking.”

“You’re trusting me to drive your car?” Noire asked, seeing Severa nod in return. “Well, I suppose it’ll make the transport a lot easier, so if you really don’t mind I guess we can do that today. Will you watch the kids while I go up and get their seats and your keys?” She didn’t reply, which Noire took as a yes because she headed right back up to the apartment, leaving Severa in charge of the stroller for a few moments. She was still hunched over and didn’t move from her spot, but she did happen to look and see the smiling face of one of the kids in the stroller, the features on the child looking so much like their father’s that it made it hard to tell which of the kids it was she was looking at, especially since Noire still dressed them identically despite there being no reason to.

When Noire came back down, two carseats in hand and the keys to the car jostling in her pocket, Severa could barely recognize that she was there, being so distracted by how awful she felt and the deep green-eyed stare of the kid she was looking at. Noire wasn’t observant enough to notice this, however, as she asked Severa, “Want to help me get them situated in these? Normally it’s Owain who does this part if we’re driving somewhere, and I don’t want to hurt either of my babies today.”

“I can do that, yeah,” she replied, closing her eyes and breathing deeply for a second to try and give herself the strength to get through what she needed to do. It wasn’t that hard of a task, not when the children involved were easy-going and seemed to enjoy car rides, and once the stroller was folded and put in the trunk and the two kids were most definitely buckled in correctly, the two ladies got in the front seat and Noire timidly started them off where she wanted them to do. “Okay, so, what’s the deal with us needing to go somewhere today?” Severa managed to ask, looking over at Noire as she did. “Want to tell me what you’re planning?”

“The twins turn one in a couple weeks and I want to start planning their birthday party now, so that it’s not a last-minute thing we’re throwing together.” Noire beamed as she answered, excited to get to put her plan to verbal words. “It’ll give me something to do today before I get the call about what’s happening with Cynthia, I’m so excited for her to finally get to hold her baby girl in her arms after so long.”

“You’re…what?” Severa had intended on responding to the idea of a birthday party with disgust, but when she heard what was happening with Cynthia that entire idea went out the window. “She’s having her baby today? And no one’s bothered telling me?”

“She said she tried calling you but you didn’t answer, and since I didn’t know I could drive your car I couldn’t help her out beyond being moral support. She’s pretty sure she’s gone into real labor and she was scared and alone and I didn’t know you didn’t know.” Noire gave a small sigh. “I ruined that for you, didn’t I?”

Shaking her head, Severa wasn’t thinking that _that_ was the part of things that had been ruined for her. “Nope, I would have found out eventually when she called me back, if she ever did. You just, ahem, told me what her baby is before she got around to doing it.”

“She never told you? But she told the rest of us at the shower…” Sighing again, Noire gave a small shake of her head. “Oh well, you now know what the rest of us knew for a while. And now you know that she’s going to have that baby here soon and she’s going to be able to bring her baby to my babies’ birthday party and it’ll be fantastic!”

Hearing the uptick in their mother’s voice as she got excited, the kids in the backseat started screeching out gibberish, throwing their arms and feet around to show their own excitement. “I’m really glad you’re pumped for that,” Severa said with a laugh, before slouching over, pain radiating through her whole body. “But damn it, I really don’t feel up to doing anything right now. What are you thinking about doing today, so I know if there’s anywhere I can sit or lay while you’re there?”

“I wanted to go see if we could rent a park pavilion for an outdoor party, since late summer is a lovely time of the year, so I’m sure we can find you a bench or something to sit on while we’re there. And after that I wanted to take the twins shopping for birthday outfits, possibly matching ones if I can find them! And after _that_ I need to find a catering service to supply food for the party, and—er, Severa?” She’d noticed midway through her list that her passenger was starting to groan, but when the groaning got louder and more concerned-sounding, she had to stop herself from talking to try and get her friend’s attention. “What’s going on, is everything okay?”

“If feeling like death is okay, then yeah, everything’s fine.” The answer was given in a deadpan tone, Severa wanting to make it clear she was lying through her teeth. But Noire took her words as genuine and went on with her planning anyway, and Severa wasn’t going to invoke the wrath of the woman to try and steer her any other way. She might have been feeling horrible, but she’d feel worse if she was yelled at by an absolute beast.

After finding a tentative park location to hold the party Noire was planning, and while on their way to the clothing store that she wanted to shop at, Severa’s phone started buzzing, which she was quick to answer as it said the incoming call was from Cynthia. “What’s going on, why’s it taken you this long to call me back?” she asked, putting the first words into the call to make sure she got answers.

“I…didn’t think you were going to answer.” It wasn’t Cynthia’s voice on the other end, but rather one that Severa didn’t want to hear. Why, of all the people in the world that they knew, had she gone to Kjelle for getting some help? “She just wanted me to call everyone and tell them that she’s not having the baby anytime in the next few hours, but it will be sometime soon, but she was sure you’d not answer.”

“My best friend’s in labor and I want details, of course I’m going to answer my damn phone when her number calls me! I don’t expect to have _you_ being the one on the line, Kjelle!” Without thinking about what she was doing, Severa ended the call and threw her phone on the car’s floorboard. “What a bitch, thinking she could use someone else’s phone to contact me like that.”

“You could have at least gotten the important information from that call,” Noire told her, sounding dejected that they didn’t seem to have gotten anything beyond what she’d already known. “Like, for instance, where she is currently. I’d like to stop by and visit her later, and it’s hard when I don’t know where she is.” That problem remedied itself when Noire’s phone went off, this time with a message that said, in written words, everything that they were sure Kjelle would have said to Severa had she been given the chance. It didn’t change the fact that the call had happened in the first place, but they at least had access to the information.

They had no idea how quickly knowing that would be relevant, but it came in handy as they were later leaving the clothing store to go to the third place on Noire’s to-do list. Severa hadn’t walked around the store much while they’d been inside, all her movements feeling sluggish and affected by whatever it was that was making her feel so miserable, so when they’d gotten back to the car she felt less like dying, yet uncomfortable all the same. As she was sitting there, with Noire in the driver’s seat saying high-pitched things to her babies in the back, she felt a familiar sensation she’d only known once before in her life, something that she vaguely remembered as being something she’d felt while heavily medicated.

And it was there, riding as a passenger in her car, that an intense wave of pain hit her and she realized she’d been putting up with these people’s stressful activities and behaviors while in active labor. “Oh gods this can’t be happening,” she choked out, hunching over again and trying to resist the simultaneous urge to scream and start pushing. “Noire, Noire please, you need to get me somewhere, quick!”

“Where’s the somewhere you need?” she asked, before quickly following herself up with, “Unless it’s just anywhere, then why can’t where we’re going work?”

“I need to get to the hospital right now, you ignorant woman!” Another blast of pain wracked her body, something she wasn’t sure how she’d been able to ignore the cause of for so long. “I am _not_ having this baby sitting here in the car, under any circumstances!”

“You’re having the baby? Right now?” Noire’s question was innocent, and when Severa yelled at her in reply, she went from innocent to angered in a flash. “Why would you do such a thing? Are you trying to ruin the day I planned out and kindly invited you out for? What kind of monster are you?”

Breathing through her nose to try and keep herself calm, Severa couldn’t bring herself to say anything in response, because she was too busy going through all the ways this could go wrong in her head rather than thinking up some way to get Noire to listen to her. When she finally had the ability to speak, immediately following a contraction that made her want to start crying, she looked at her friend who was seething in the driver’s seat and said, “I didn’t ask for this to happen, now I need you to get your head out of your ass long enough to get me to the hospital before I end up scarring you and your kids for life with giving birth right here!” There wasn’t an immediate change in their direction, which led her to hastily add, “That means get going, now!”

“I wasn’t aware you were anywhere close to having the baby today.” Having shifted back to her normal self due to being yelled at, Noire heeded Severa’s demands and started them in a different direction than the one they’d been going in. “Do you think it’s possible she heard us talking about Cynthia having hers and wanted to come out and be part of things?”

“No, I don’t,” Severa said, grumbling as she tried willing her body to slow things down, for just as long as it took for them to get her some help. “I think this is all completely screwed up and there’s no way I’m having this kid weeks early, especially not at the exact same time Cynthia’s having hers. We’ve told everyone that both of us have my due date, not hers, so what do we say to them after this? ‘Fuck dudes, we lied to you all about it’? Hell no, I’m not getting wrapped up in even more lying accusations.”

“To be fair, you and her have been lying about this from the start, to give her a story that wouldn’t ruin her good-girl image.” Noire could hear the pained noises that were coming from the seat next to her, which motivated her to go a little faster, trying to get them to their destination even a bit quicker. “Maybe it’s karma for—“

“I’ve gotten enough karma for everything I’ve done lately, don’t even bother telling me that me being a good friend and helping cover her ass is biting me in mine.” Having this conversation was doing wonders at distracting Severa from the pain she was going through, but it wasn’t enough to keep her mind off of everything happening to her at the moment. Every other thought she had came back to how terrifyingly close she was to bringing another life into the world, and she really wanted to be surrounded by people who knew what they were doing when it happened.

Thankfully, Noire managed to get them to the nearby hospital without incident, but all she did was pull up to the curb and park the car for Severa to get out herself. “I can’t leave the twins in here, as much as I’d love to help you out,” she explained, “and getting them out of the car will take longer than you’d probably like right now. Don’t worry, though! I’ll drop them off with someone and be back to be with you, because you really shouldn’t be going through this alone.”

“Oh great idea, let the actively-in-labor woman get out of a car on her own and walk into a hospital without anyone accompanying her. I can’t see how this won’t go badly at all.” Cursing her horrible luck at the timing of this happening, Severa was greeted with an even worse scene when she finally pulled herself out of her seat and found that somewhere in the middle of everything she’d managed to stain the dress she was wearing and the fabric of the seat with various fluids from her body. “I…oh gods this is really happening,” she choked out, stumbling as she coped with the sight she was facing.

“Go inside, they’ll get you taken care of, and I’ll be back in no time to be with you. Just be rational and don’t freak out at anyone who tries helping you, it’ll be better that way.” Listening to Noire tell someone to be rational would have been more hilarious had the situation not been what it was, and after giving a few more words of encouragement (as well as a promise to clean the stain out of the car when she got the chance), Severa was closing the door so that she could go inside and her friend could be on her way.

She very nearly collapsed in the few steps it took to get from the curbside to the entrance doors, hospital workers coming outside to see what the issue was. What they were met with was a panicked woman who was clearly deep in the throes of labor. They grabbed her a wheelchair to push her up to a room in, and tried doing all the check-in things on their way up to the floor where they would hopefully be able to help her out. For most of the questions, she was belligerent in answering, not wanting to spend what was left of her energy on explaining herself and what she was doing.

“This isn’t the first time I’ve gone through this, look me up in your system if you need me to tell you all this shit right this moment!” she yelled, scaring a nurse or two into backing away from her. “I’m telling you, there’s no way I’m going to be able to hold on until I’m in a room if you keep wasting time like this!”

There wasn’t a wait to get her a bed on the maternity floor once someone did look her up and found her information, including her registration for a birth within a month of the current day. Transferring her from the chair she was in up to the bed was an ordeal, as she was still screaming at everyone and didn’t want their help, yet it was clear she wasn’t going to have the strength to get into the bed on her own. By the time she got situated and the first doctors came into the room to introduce themselves to her and see how far into labor she was, there wasn’t enough time for them to properly make any sort of assessment before they were having to help bring a child into the world.

The lungs on the baby worked right away, her screaming within seconds of being born, but none of the doctors said a word about her; they were calling for nurses to come into the room and trying to get the child cleaned off right away, and for all of this Severa was forced to watch, completely aware of what was going on, with nothing but pain and a desire to hold her child right away.

When they did get her cleaned off and laid the still-screaming child on her chest, she took one look at the scrunched-up and bright red face that belonged to the one piece of her marriage she still had in her possession, and gave a breathy laugh as she smiled. All the pain she knew she was still in seemed to fade as she brought her hand, freshly pricked with a needle attached to all the necessary machines, up to meet her daughter’s.

Her smile turned to a look of horror when one of her fingers was touched with a grasp that was unlike any baby’s she’d ever felt before.


	9. The Chameleon

Her eyes darting away from the quickly-calming face of the child, Severa looked to see what was making this newborn hand-holding seem different than usual, and found that all she _could_ see was what looked like a tiny finger and a thumb wrapped around her pointer finger. “S-s-something’s wrong with her,” she blurted out, startling the baby back to screaming once the doctors were grabbing her to see what was being referred to. “Her hand, something’s wrong with it!”

She was quickly assured that nothing was wrong and that it was a combination of nerves and exhaustion making her believe something was, that after they did more vitals and tests on her there wouldn’t be anything different about her than any other child. “No, you don’t understand, it was like she was missing fingers,” she tried explaining, the sensation of baby Chelena’s pitiful grip not leaving her hand. “Listen, my last kid had a bad foot, if something’s wrong with her I can handle it.”

The insistence that nothing was wrong ended as quickly as it had started, when the doctors and nurses who were gathered noticed the exact thing Severa was warning them about. Without explaining a thing to her, they took the baby out of the room with them, leaving her alone to lay in the bed and worry about what could be going on. When someone knocked at the door she called for them to come in, figuring it was a doctor prepared to break some kind of bad news to her—so when the door opened and a face she never wanted to see again appeared in her room, she regretted saying anything. “I heard you were up here, and since they’ve got Cynthia chilling and eating ice cubes right now, I figured stopping by to see what was going on would be appropriate.”

“You coming in here isn’t appropriate at all, no matter your reason,” Severa replied, trying to look anywhere but at her visitor and finding it impossible due to how bare-bones the room was. Her gaze was resting on the face that was quickly approaching her, eyes narrowing as she tried to think of what else to say or do. “I’ll give you about five seconds to leave before I call someone in here to remove you.”

“Whoa there, don’t need to do that. I’m just checking on you, don’t jump to being petty with me right away. At least give me a chance to explain myself.” As the person raised their hands defensively, Severa was already pushing the button to call for a nurse, knowing that it wouldn’t be very long at all before someone was there to help. “Don’t think I don’t see you doing that, Severa. Why aren’t you going to let me talk to you?”

“Oh, I don’t know, why don’t you look around this place and tell me what’s wrong with it?” She was referring to the fact that they were the only people in the room, but just to make sure that point got across she went ahead and explained it. “I had to get dropped off at the curb by someone who couldn’t even come up here with me, because _you_ caused my husband to believe I’d been cheating on him!”

“Is that what all this is about?” Lowering her hands as she brought them together in front of her face in a thoughtful pose, Kjelle saw the absolutely disgusted look Severa shot at her for asking her question. “Okay, I suppose that’s a good reason to want me out of your life, but don’t you want to hear about how I feel about all of this? Make things a little less about yourself sometimes, please.”

How unintentionally funny it was, Kjelle telling her to be less self-centered while insisting on talking about themselves. “I don’t care about how you feel, you ruined my life and then didn’t do a damn thing to set things straight after you got rejected. I’ve been alone for a month and a half, I’ve been living on couches and being a burden on the few people who didn’t hate me for what you did, and I seriously just had to give birth here by myself! But you want me to focus on you and how you feel?”

“When you word it like that, it does make me seem like a heartless bitch, but hear me out.” The door to the room was opening again, the sound of wheels rolling in being the background noise to what Kjelle was about to say. “The moment you drove off after our…argument there at the park, I realized how in the wrong I was. I got too fixated on getting what I wanted that I forgot to keep in mind that you didn’t want the same things I did. Let my insistence on getting what I want cloud my judgment.”

By the time she finished speaking, the nurse who’d entered the room, pushing the small bassinet that they’d laid the baby down in, was standing right beside her, looking between the two women. She apologized for the interruption, just to ask about the call that had been made to the nurses’ station. “It must’ve been on accident, sorry,” Severa said, knowing she was lying but she was feeling just generous enough to not have Kjelle forcibly removed at the moment. “Might have been a ‘hey, where’s my baby’ kind of reaction.”

Kjelle, meanwhile, had taken to looking at the now-sleeping child in the little carrier, crouching down beside it to get a better look at her face. “Aw, would you look at this, she’s a little you, Severa! Have you gotten to actually see her yet?”

“I have, but…” Remembering what had happened to get the baby taken out of the room in the first place, Severa shook her head and sighed. “Bring her over here so I can actually see her again, please.” The nurse complied, Kjelle following right beside as she was enamored with watching the baby sleep, and once the carrier was at the bedside the nurse stepped back and reminded her to only use the call button for necessary calls. “Yeah, got it,” she replied, fakely smiling at the nurse until she turned to leave. As soon as she knew she wasn’t being watched, she sighed again. “I don’t like that you, of all people, got to see her before her father did.”

“I didn’t figure you would like that very much, but the opportunity was here for it.” Still looking at Chelena like she was transfixed by her sleeping figure, Kjelle gave a soft laugh. “It’s funny, I came here today because Cynthia was panicking out of her mind and Inigo was mid-performance or something at the time, he wasn’t getting any of her calls, and she just needed someone to help her out. Well, he’s still not here but she’s fine, and you’re here alone and needed someone as well. I’m just…not the someone you needed, obviously.”

Severa nodded, the entire story making sense to her given what she’d gone through earlier in the day, but her nod was not exactly one done in acceptance. “I’d rather have anyone but you, after what you did. But you at least seem to realize that you screwed up big time, so maybe you being here isn’t so bad after all.”

“Of course me being the one that’s here is bad, what the hell are you talking about?” Kjelle’s head shot up to look at Severa, who was looking back at her in shock at how honest she’d just been. “You said it yourself, you don’t like that I got to see her before her dad did, and you know what? I agree with that, so much. I broke up your marriage for nothing, and now I end up benefitting from it after all. I got to see the baby first.”

Her hand was creeping towards Chelena, almost as if she was going to touch or grab her, but she stopped herself when she heard Severa give a loud, throat-clearing cough. “I…mean, you want to hold her now, don’t you? Wouldn’t you want someone to help you get her?”

“I’ll wait until the nurse comes back to get to hold her, thanks.” There was something she was noticing as she was staring at Kjelle, something that even in her tired mind wasn’t making sense, and it was when the other woman stood back up and started backing away towards the door without another word that she found the care within herself to say it. “You dyed your hair before you got here, didn’t you?”

“What an odd question to ask me right now.” Raising her hand to her head, Kjelle touched her hair for a moment before pulling her hand to her face, gasping for air once she yanked it away. “Oh gods, you can smell it on me still. Here I was, thinking I’d have time today to get this done and then I got pulled away a bit too soon. At least it mostly bleached my hair in the time I gave it.”

“It looks nice on you.” Severa paused, considering the impact of what else she had to say, but when she remembered all that had transpired that summer between herself and Kjelle, she decided that throwing her next thought out there was only fitting. “Can’t wait to hear you’ve abandoned town again. Looking forward to it.”

All color drained from Kjelle’s face at the brutal honesty in Severa’s words, and she forced herself to laugh awkwardly before dashing towards the door, getting out of the room before she had a chance to make any other comments. When the door closed behind her, leaving the room down to only two people, that was when Severa looked down at her sleeping baby beside her and sighed, regretting not having taken up the offer of Kjelle handing her to her before she left.

But accepting that offer would have required letting someone that wasn’t herself or a trained professional touch the girl, and with Kjelle in particular, who had made it clear she was into stealing pregnant ladies from their significant others in order to have their children as her own, that was a bad idea. What if she’d tried to snatch Chelena from right before her eyes? What would she have done, watching someone who’d wanted that child so badly just going ahead and taking her? In any case, it would have probably been a better outcome for the girl than the one Severa figured was coming, because at least Kjelle would _try_ to be a competent parent if she managed to end up with a kid.  
For the other parent that this child rightfully belonged to, there really wasn’t any hope of him ever becoming competent, and Severa was not looking forward to the moment when he managed to end up be the sole guardian of the girl simply because of who his mother was and her influence on his life and decisions. This led her to spend every moment she could there in the room with her child, and after finally disregarding any kind of “rest” she should have been taking she reached over and grabbed her for herself, lifting her out of her little container and letting her rest right up next to her.

This girl, little Chelena, still deeply asleep by some act of the gods, was easily cuter than her sister had been when she’d been a newborn. (That might have been some of Severa’s memories being corrupted by her initial disdain for Lunabel, however, but she wasn’t going to question it because she hadn’t seen the other girl in a month and a half.) Her face, even in her sleep, was puckered up in a pout that showed how displeased she was with the world, but there was a softness to her face that her sister hadn’t had. Her wispy hair was incredibly fair and gave her hope that maybe, just maybe, she’d be saved from the curse of the blue hair that ran rampant on her father’s side of the family.

And then her eyes went down to Chelena’s hands and she was reminded of why this girl was just as broken as her sister had been. One hand was perfectly fine, ten fingers all in place, but the other hand was almost disgusting to look at, with just a thumb and a small nub for a pointer finger as its only digits. She didn’t seem to stir as her mother grabbed the hand and felt where the three missing fingers should have been, but when her hand was let go of she cracked open one of her pale eyes and gave a sleepy mewl that let her mother know she was moments from waking up for real.

When she was wide-eyed and awake, oddly alert for a child born just early enough to be considered premature (but not by much), she was looking around everywhere except at her mother’s face, while her mother continued making sure that, missing fingers aside, the girl had no flaws. Her feet showed no sign of the issue that her sister had been born with, and she happened to like when her mother’s fingers brushed up against the bottoms of her tiny and flat feet.

The only issue that she seemed to have was her hand, and that was a good thing, because Severa would have honestly felt guilty if she was going to be handing over a severely broken child when the time came. “I hope he’ll let me spend time like this with you sometime when you’re older,” she whispered to the girl, who didn’t seem to recognize her mother was talking until she was pulled in closer to her. “I really don’t ever want to let you leave my arms after today, but I know…ugh, I know he’ll take you from me and between him and his mother they’ll raise you to hate me.”

“Who’s going to raise who to do what now?” The voice came as a surprise to Severa, as she hadn’t heard the door to the room open as she’d been so wrapped up in examining and talking to Chelena to notice that someone had come in. For a moment, the sound of the voice that had questioned her didn’t register in her mind as belonging to the person that it did, and she was scrambling to try and come up with some snappy remark, but when it sank in that the person in question was not in fact the person she thought it was, she was looking towards the speaker to see Cynthia standing there, giving her a small and tired wave. “I got permission to walk around a bit, figured I could come over here to check on you. Kjelle said your baby was beautiful and I wanted to see for myself, if that’s okay.”

“Huh, surprised she went and said anything about coming over here,” Severa remarked, before adding, “Of course _you_ can see her, you’re my best friend and keeping my best friend away from my baby would be wrong.”

“She told me she was coming here, even though I told her it was a bad idea, so sorry that I didn’t convince her otherwise.” As Cynthia came closer, every step carefully placed so that she didn’t hurt herself by accidentally slipping on something, Severa noticed that she looked simultaneously tired and scared, as if what was happening to her wasn’t something she’d prepared for.

“Er, are you really sure you should be walking around like this?” she asked, worry starting to get to her as she got a better look at her friend’s face. “I get that you want to see me and Chelena, but you should put yourself and your kid first right now.”

Unfazed by the concern, Cynthia told her, “No, I got permission, I told you that. They think that me walking around will keep this from going on too long into the night, because I guess everything just kind of stalled out at…hm. I think it was right before we heard that you’d been checked in, maybe? The time’s kind of fuzzy, it’s been a long a painful day. Now lemme see Chelena, I’ve been waiting for this almost as long as I’ve been waiting to meet my little one and you know it!”

“Well if you insist on this, I’m not going to deny you anything. Maybe seeing her’ll kickstart your body into letting you meet your kid sometime soon.” Lifting Chelena up so that Cynthia could see her staring eyes and her perpetually upset-looking pout, she got the reaction she wanted out of her friend when she cooed at the cuteness of the girl. “Do you feel anything yet, maybe some kind of urge to push you can’t ignore…?”

“Not yet, but I’m sure it’ll happen soon.” Cynthia brought one hand up to cup her cheek at the adorable baby she was looking at, while resting the other hand on the top of her stomach, which she lightly drummed with her fingers. “You can’t see this, sweetie,” she whispered as she tapped, “but there’s this cute baby here that’s going to be your best friend someday and you really need to hurry up and get to meet her. But you’ve got to at least wait for your daddy to get here, okay? I’m not going through what Severa’s had to go through.”

Something about Cynthia’s way of saying that brought a lump into Severa’s throat, because she was hearing someone desperately ask for something aside from what had just happened to her. She was having the worst luck imaginable, and everyone was well-aware of that fact, to the point that they were using her as their lowest possible level they could reach. No one wanted to go through what she had, no one wanted to be in her shoes, and she was wishing that she was anywhere but her current position as well.

Alas, there was no way she was going to manage to fix anything, not when things had gotten as muddled as they had. “You better come let me and Chelena meet your baby right away, first outside visitor kind of status, you hear me?” she said, a false threat as she was sure she was far down the wanted visitor list given how much everyone still hated her. “We’ve got to make sure we start making them into best friends right away.”

“I like the sound of that! I’ll make sure to send someone over here the moment I’m ready to see you two, I promise!” But promises weren’t always meant to be kept, and Severa wasn’t quite accepting of this one, even if she didn’t say so. After Cynthia blew a kiss towards Chelena and the girl responded by, completely coincidentally, beginning to wail loudly, that was when she decided it was time for her to head back to her own room. “I’ll leave you to cheer that cutie back up, I’m going to go see if I can have more ice chips or something to pass the time until Inigo finally shows up. You two have fun in here!”

“Oh yeah, silencing a screaming newborn. That’s a real fun activity.” Severa watched her friend leave just as carefully as she’d approached, but once she closed the door she knew she wasn’t going to be able to keep a watchful eye on her anymore, and with how soundproof the rooms tended to be she wouldn’t be able to listen to footsteps outside. She was hoping and contemplating praying to make sure that Cynthia made it back to her room safely, but then she heard what sounded like arguing voices outside the room’s door, growing louder but unable to have sense made of due to the screaming happening right in front of her.

Chalking it up to one of the nurses getting mouthy with Cynthia about her being out of bed, Severa turned her focus to calming Chelena back down, not wanting the baby to cry too much for no reason. It took some cuddling and an eventual resignation that the necessary action was to start feeding her, but soon the room was quiet aside from machine noises and the still-occurring argument on the other side of the door. She couldn’t let herself focus on what was happening out there, not when she had no idea what was happening. All she knew was that one of the voices sounded vaguely male, and the other one was definitely Cynthia’s, anything else was nothing more than speculation.

Then the door to the room opened and in walked someone Severa hadn’t seen in a while and honestly hadn’t wanted to see. “Why didn’t you try tellin’ me that this was happening? I just got an earful from Cynthia out there because she’s angry I wasn’t here, but I had no idea anything was happenin’!” Sounding distressed, and slightly upset, Brady came right to the bedside and gripped the foot of the bed, his arms shaking as he did. “You’re just tryin’ to leave me out of things now, huh?”

“Trying to…what?” Playing the role of someone who had no idea what was going on, all it took was him looking down towards Chelena for her to follow his eyes, gasping in surprise when she saw the baby nestled at her chest. “Oh _gawds_ where did this come from? I have no idea what happened here!”

“Yeah, no, don’t play stupid with me. Why was it that we had to get this news from my aunt, who heard it from her son, who heard it from his wife, because she was the person ya decided to go to about this? Come on Sev, what happened to us bein’ married?” She was confused at how he was asking her this question, as if he had no clue that she’d been kicked out and then had his phone information changed right under his nose. It was impossible that he wasn’t aware of that second part, wasn’t it?

It was a risk worth taking, accusing him of being so unobservant as to not know his mother had done either of those things. “What happened was someone lying about me and what she’d done to me, and your dearest mother deciding that I wasn’t worth living with you anymore. And then, today of all days she went and changed at least your phone plan, and who am I to know if she didn’t go ahead and change your number as well? Come the fuck on, Brady, you have to know this stuff.”

“She didn’t change my number, she just didn’t want you havin’ to pay for my phone when you don’t have much money anymore.” Biting his lip at how she’d just lashed out at him, Brady’s entire lower jaw wavered before he spoke again, sounding choked up. “Sev, I would’ve loved to have been here with ya, if you’d just told me that somethin’ was happening today.”

“Oh right, because no contact and letting me live on people’s couches for over a month totally shows that you would have loved to be here. Right.” She didn’t mean to sound angry, even though she was, because she didn’t want an argument to happen right there while she had a child attached to her chest. He didn’t seem to be wanting to talk, however, not with how he was sniffling and on the verge of tears. “Seriously Brady, I don’t know what kind of idiot you take me for, but I’m not buying your ignorance here.”

He backed away, hitting the wall behind him as he shook his head rapidly, trying to cope with what he’d just heard. “I figured, based on how much Cynthia was out there tryin’ to motivate me on comin’ in here, it wasn’t going to be easy to convince ya that I hadn’t wanted any part of what Ma forced on ya. Ma overreacted, I know it and she knows it, but what was she goin’ to do? Call ya up and say you’re welcome back in the house? She’s got too much pride to admit she’s wrong in anything.”

“And so you let her and her _pride_ keep me living on couches with people who were only putting up with me because I was pregnant? I can’t believe you would say such a thing to me, not when I guess I _was_ your wife!” Raising a hand to point angrily at him, as he cowered against the wall in his self-inflicted exile, she then calmly said, “I would have loved to have come home and spend the past month being with you as you floundered around in your miserable life, but instead you abandoned me simply because it’s what your mom wanted you to do.”

“My life’s not miserable!” Brady cried back, bringing himself off the wall to come to the foot of the bed again. “I mean, it is now, ‘cause you’re not in it, but I doubt you’d want to be back in it after all this. Ma really screwed this one up for me and you, all because she wanted what was best for me without, uh, askin’ me what I wanted.”

Smirking before looking at how steadily upset Brady was getting, Severa clarified, “More like, you didn’t bother asking yourself what you wanted because her word was clearly more powerful than mine. I didn’t kiss her, she kissed me, and if you ever trusted a damn thing I said you’d have known that!”

“You didn’t even tell me that you’d stopped workin’ your job until days later, it’s more like you don’t want to let me trust a damn thing you say!” Accidentally getting louder as he continued, Brady ended up getting just loud enough to break Chelena from her trance that she’d fallen into while she’d been eating. When her mouth was free she started screaming once more, causing her father—who had yet to hear her screams before—to blink in surprise at the noise. “Sev…is that what she sounds like?” he asked, trying to bring his volume down as Severa worked to get Chelena back to her silence. “She’s so tiny right now and she really sounds like it.”

“Yes, you dumbass, that’s what she sounds like when she’s upset that you started yelling at her mom like you just did.” Severa wasn’t playing around, and she hoped that Brady recognized that she wasn’t going to, so when she saw him coming around to her bedside she was confused at how he’d misread her intentions. “What are you doing? You’re not going to get time with her right now, not when I know you’re here to take her from me.”

His jaw slightly dropped at the accusation, but by the time he’d drawn himself a chair and was sitting at her side, reaching out to touch the baby once again nestled at her mother’s chest, he was back to normal. “I’d never dream of takin’ her away from ya, Sev. She’s yours, and she’s mine too, and if we could get back to raisin’ her and Luna together, I think that’d be pretty neat.”

“Uh huh, you’re just trying to lull me into a sense of security right now, aren’t you?” She was having to resist the temptation to slap his hand away, but when he finally got a touch on one of Chelena’s feet she knew that the battle was lost. He was sighing happily as he stroked both of her properly-formed feet, enjoying that they weren’t having to deal with that nightmare again, and she didn’t want to crush his spirits about anything at that moment. This was a father meeting his newborn for the first time, who was she to destroy that? “Okay, but if we’re going to raise them together, we’re going to have to do something about your mother ruining things for us all over again.”

“Don’t worry, she’s here to talk this out with us. She’s downstairs at the gift shop, havin’ Luna pick somethin’ up to bring up here for her new baby sister. Luna’s been talkin’ nonstop about getting to see you again, Sev. She really misses her mom, and she’s even started getting used to the idea of havin’ Chelena around because she thinks she’ll bring ya back into her life.” He was reaching further up Chelena, his hand now gently caressing her side, getting closer and closer to what Severa knew was going to bring him heartbreak. “So I really hope you’ll come back to live with us once you’re outta here.”

“I’ll consider it, how about that?” If Severa could get her way she’d go back in an instant, but she knew that mending things with Maribelle wasn’t going to be a quick process, and she didn’t want to get too excited about the idea of returning back to the life she’d created for herself with her husband and children. “I just can’t shake the idea that your mother is going to take one look at me, call me a whore again, and send me back to the curb.”

“She won’t do—er, Sev?” This was the moment that she’d been dreading with him meeting the baby, when he’d gone to touch her hand and found it disfigured. “What’s goin’ on with her fingers here? Seems like she’s missin’ something.”

When she found the easiest way to explain it to him, she could hear his breathing get more panicked with every gasp he took in, until he was close to hyperventilating and clutching the afflicted hand tightly. “I know, it really took me by surprise when she grabbed me with the hand on her own, but think of it this way. At least she’s got some kind of fingers on it, and at least it’s not another damn foot problem.”

“But it’s still somethin’ wrong with our little girl, and why does this keep happenin’ to us? Owain and Noire got to have two perfectly fine kids, if you can look past who their parents are, and I’m sure Cynthia and Inigo’s kid’ll be fine too. But ours? We’re two-for-two on broken babies.” His grasp was loosening on Chelena’s hand, but he wasn’t quite letting go of her. “Maybe we should take this as a sign that this is the last time we go out makin’ kids with each other.”

“As if we’ll have the chance to do it again, now having two kids to raise for ourselves.” She was resisting laughing, especially since he was really distraught about this turn of events. “Sorry that I gave you two bitch-faced daughters and we can’t be bothered to try for a son. I’m not going through all this again to have another broken kid.”

“When you say ‘all this’, do ya mean just the bein’ pregnant part, or all the drama that came with it this time? ‘Cause I’d really hope we never have to deal with someone as dead-set on breakin’ our marriage as Kjelle was ever again.” He winced as he said the name, looking to Severa to make sure she wasn’t offended at hearing it, and when she didn’t seem to mind he asked her something related to the woman in question. “Say, did ya know that she’s here today? Cynthia was tellin’ me that she’s the one who brought here here, and—“

“Trust me, I know she’s here.” Severa wasn’t going to get into the details of how she knew, because she was sure that Brady would lose his mind if he heard that Kjelle had met Chelena before him. “Let’s just act like she doesn’t exist and that she’s never going to bother us again, and we’ll be much, much happier that way. Our lives would’ve been better if she’d never shown her face in this town again, so let’s act like she hadn’t.”  
Pretending that Kjelle hadn’t been around would be next to impossible, given that she’d shaped their lives that summer, but it was a good move to suggest in order to try and bring things back to how they always should have been. If she hadn’t been there, things would have fallen into place much differently for everyone who’d been involved in their lives, but at the same time, would things have been better or worse if Kjelle hadn’t been around pulling the strings? “Ya know what, that sounds like a great plan,” Brady said, smiling at Severa and making her feel like melting at how happy he was trying to look and how much she’d missed seeing his face. “She wasn’t here, and none of this happened. We’re back to bein’ one big, happy family, and nothin’ is going to change that.”

Severa could think of several things that would change that, but she wasn’t going to bring any of them up in this tender moment. The last thing she wanted, or needed, to do was upset Brady again all over again, and honestly? Just having him (and Lunabel, once she came up to the room) back in her life was worth more than correcting him. “You know what, I think you’re right,” she finally said, having been watching how, even though he had been focusing on her, Brady had still managed to be ever-so-gentle with Chelena at the same time. “Nothing is going to change what we’ve got, and we’re going to have to make sure we get it back to how it always was meant to be.”

“That’s the spirit, Sev!” His smile was so infectious that it spread straight to Severa’s face as well, and it was then that she told herself that the moment the baby was properly fed and wasn’t going to cry if she wasn’t latched on to something with her mouth, she was going straight into her father’s arms, because he deserved it. He hadn’t wanted to be separated from them like he had been, and it showed with how much love and affection he was showing them both as he was sitting there. “Trust me,” he said, with his hand now resting on Chelena’s back as if was permanently attached there, “when Ma gets up here, we’re going to prove to her that you’re not the one in the wrong and that you deserve gettin’ to live with us all over again, and she’ll allow it.”

“Something tells me it’s not quite going to work like that, but you know what, I’ll give believing you a shot on this.” It was hard to say it, because Severa knew how deep Maribelle’s hatred ran, but she knew that it was for the best if she believed in what Brady was telling her. Maribelle couldn’t really have been the kind of monster to separate young girls from their mother because of someone going around dead-set on ruining someone’s life, even if it had seemed that way from the start. She was going to have to fix things and get over herself on this one issue.

The moment of truth came after what felt like an hour, but judging by how no nurses had stopped in to check on either mother or child it couldn’t have been nearly that long before it happened. When the door to the room opened and the first audible thing from the outside was an excited shriek of a child, the two in the room knew exactly who was standing on the other side. “Mama, I have balloons!” Lunabel screamed, either not having been told to keep her voice down or having disregarded the warning entirely, and true to the girl’s word she had a bundle of pink balloons held tightly in one hand. “Mamaw-belle says for Che-eena!”

“I tried working on getting her to say her sister’s name properly while we browsed, but she seems to have forgotten exactly how she was told to pronounce it.” Looking disdainful as she walked in the room to see Severa in there, Maribelle’s eyes went straight to where the little girl was, which was in her father’s arms. “So how does it feel, holding her after you’ve waited patiently for so long, Brady dear?”

“It definitely would’ve been better if I’d been here from the start, but holdin’ her now isn’t all that bad,” he answered, not looking at his mother to see what kind of negative reaction she gave. “I love this little girl just as much as I love Luna already, and I’ve known her for not very long at all.”

“Hm, how interesting. And you, how are you feeling after having to endure what I assume was another long and painful childbirth?” Maribelle addressing Severa was unexpected, and based on how she was still looking like being in the orange-haired woman’s presence was hurting her she must have felt like she was obligated to ask the question.

That look of disgust turned to one of shock when Severa snappily replied with, “Oh, it was a couple hours tops, and wasn’t that bad at all. Minus the part where your son wasn’t here with me for it because of how far up your ass your head’s been about everything lately.”

“How dare you speak to me like that when I have come here to congratulate you. Sure, some of the things I have done as of late were not exactly appropriate for the situation, and I am aware I might have overreacted towards you, but you have no right to attack me like that.” Maribelle gave a few disappointing tongue clicks as she made her way to standing right next to Brady, looking down at the baby he was holding. “However, I suppose I can forgive you, given how much suffering you’ve been through at my insistence.”

“Because what I’m looking for right now is your forgiveness, sure.” Severa stopped talking when she saw, out of the corner of her eye, the balloons all hitting the ceiling as Lunabel let go of them to try climbing into the bed with her mother, something that she felt she needed to put a stop to. “No, Luna, you can’t get up here with me, this isn’t like a bed at home where you can cuddle next to me.”

The girl pouted, still trying despite being told not to. “Sorry Mama, but I gotta! I miss my Mama lots and lots!” she chirped as she got one leg up on the bed, something she was able to use to pull the rest of herself up with. “When is Mama coming home?”

“I don’t know,” she replied, going from watching her older daughter over to looking at the younger one still in her father’s arms. “Depends on what old Maribelle over there is planning on doing with me and Chelena, I suppose.”

Without so much as a second to think, Maribelle already had a response ready. “Quite obviously, Chelena will be coming to live with us. She deserves nothing but the best life for herself, and that means being raised in a home where people love and appreciate her.” Her voice tapered off when she looked towards Severa, who seemed to be making the connection that the “home” that was spoken of was one without her, and therefore was looking as if she was about to cry. “However, what kind of grandmother would I be if I insisted on stripping my grandchild from the person she currently needs most in life?”

“Er, Ma, you’d honestly be doing the exact same thing you’ve been doin’ to Luna for the past month,” Brady reminded her, finally pulling his attention off of Chelena long enough to give his mother a dirty look. “Which, now that I’ve actually gotten to talk to Sev about everything, I don’t think there’s ever been a reason for you to have been even half as nasty to her as you have been. Changin’ my phone information without givin’ her warning, really? I could’ve been here for everything if you’d just talked things out with her!”

“I will admit, I did a lot of things wrong here in this entire mess, but this moment isn’t about me, now is it?” Nodding towards Chelena, Maribelle reached over to grab one of her tiny hands, and like both of the parents who’d done that before her, she was taken aback by the lack of fingers on one hand. “Good gods, what’s happened here? I know for a fact that missing fingers isn’t something that runs in my family!”

Hearing the exclamation made Severa groan, bringing a hand to her face to cover it with. She knew this was going to be something that every person who met the child was going to ask, and she was going to have to come up with some good answer to give when it happened. “I don’t know, she’s missing fingers and that’s all I know about it. I don’t think anyone in my family’s got the problem either, well except my dad because he’s had part of one sliced off but that’s different.” She paused, something about mentioning her parents reminding her that she hadn’t gotten around to telling them that she’d already had the baby, but thinking about them made her remember that if they found out, they’d most likely tell Subaki and she’d have to endure another encounter with him and his condescending behavior.

“That missing finger spared him from a longer prison sentence one time, I’ll have you know,” Maribelle told her, “and I’m sure these missing fingers on Chelena will teach her ways to get through life that none of the rest of us understand. For being born under such…horrible circumstances, I’m glad she’s ultimately okay.”

Something about Maribelle being the one to say those words made Severa feel as if things really were going to be okay after all, with her family and in her life.

* * *

“I apologize that we had to change the venue, but as I thought about it I figured that you moms with your bitty babies wouldn’t want to be sitting out in the sun all day with them.” Noire looked pleased with herself as she addressed the two other women sitting at the long table in the side of the restaurant they’d found themselves at. “Besides, it would be cheaper to eat here than it would be to have the outdoor party catered, and I know that money’s really important in all our lives right now. I was willing to make this sacrifice to make sure that this party worked for everyone.”

“Thanks for that, actually!” Cynthia replied, rocking the covered carseat on the chair next to her. “As cute as it would be to get to label pictures with ‘my sun’s first day in the sun’, I don’t think it’d be best for Soleil to be out for too long right now.” She giggled at what she’d said, rocking the seat more to keep the child contained within it from getting distressed. “I think this’ll be better for your kids too, though, because now they can’t go out eating bugs and dirt and icky things like that.”

“Oh yeah, welcome to being parent to kids who don’t know the difference between rocks and their snacks,” Severa added, looking first at the child sitting on her lap who was scribbling down colors on her menu before turning to look at the carseat right beside her. “I hope that by the time Chelena’s a year old, I’ll only have to worry about her eating things she shouldn’t be eating. Luna’s still got that habit.”

Sounding indignant as she threw her crayon down, Luna retorted, “I eat cake and yum food, Mama. No rocks.” Just like that, she picked her crayon up and was back to coloring in an instant, ignoring the fact that her mother was snorting in laughter right behind her. “Lemme color pretty now, ‘kay?”

“Sure thing, Luna my love.” Leaning her head down to kiss right in between her daughter’s pigtails, which were starting to get long enough to actually hang as opposed to stick out like cactuses, Severa glanced at the picture Luna was coloring and had to restrain herself from laughing louder. “I sure hope Chelena learns to be a better artist than that, too,” she remarked, before being kicked by the child on her lap. “Hey now, you do not get violent against your mother, got it?”

While Lunabel and Severa started going back and forth with each other, Noire had taken the thing that both ladies had said to her to heart and was glancing between her two kids, both of whom were in high chairs and on either side of her. “I certainly hope neither of you would resort to eating gross things when you know I’ll always give you cookies,” she told them, both kids looking at her with eager expressions at mention of cookies (not to mention Lunabel was trying to look over as well, except her face was being grabbed by her mother so that she wouldn’t lose focus on their discussion). “Of course, I’m sure your father would also eat bugs if he was given the opportunity, so maybe I shouldn’t have my hopes up.”

“Owain? Eating bugs? That’s so gross!” Still giggling, Cynthia curbed her excitement when it dawned on her that the three ladies and five kids that were sitting there were the only people who’d gathered for the party so far, meaning that the man they were speaking of wasn’t around to hear the accusations thrown in his direction. “Say, where is he, anyway? I know Inigo’s going to be late because he’s having a grand sendoff for his dancers for a job well done, and who knows about Brady, but this is the party for Owain’s own kids and he’s not even here for it yet!”

Noire didn’t seemed bothered by the spoken realization, and didn’t comment on it until she was having to reach over to pull a plate out of the reach of one of the twins. “He’ll be here when he gets here, he told me he was going to be bringing all their presents in when he got here and we have quite a few presents for both of them. His parents are quite doting when they’re given the chance, and they went above and beyond on this one.”

“They do have to play the role of two sets of grandparents, so that makes sense.” Ignoring that her comment seemed to strike a nerve in Noire, as she was blinking rapidly to try and keep herself calm, Cynthia turned to look at the amount of empty chairs still at the table. “But that doesn’t explain why you’ve gotten such a big table. There can’t really be _that_ many people showing up for this party, can there be?”

“There are plenty of people coming, maybe not the people you seem to expect should be here, but I’ve invited many people who actually matter in the lives of my precious children!” Slamming her hand down on the table, Noire startled both her kids into crying, confused at why their mother was angry, as well as causing two distinct wails to start coming from the carseats at the table. Like she always did, the moment she realized she’d done something wrong in a fit of anger she was back to her soft-spoken ways, apologizing as she started trying to fix her mistake.

Fixing the issues for the other two women wasn’t going to be as easy as it was going to be for Noire, because all she had to do was offer some snack to the twins to get them to calm down. Cynthia was able to make quick work of getting Soleil to stop crying, simply by rocking the seat back and forth more until the baby stopped crying, but Severa wasn’t as lucky due to already having a child on her lap and having a baby who resisted calming down unless she was being held. Thankfully, in a stroke of perfect timing, it was while she was fumbling through getting Chelena out that Brady came up behind her, and after he kissed her on the cheek and gave Lunabel a soft pat on the head, he was doing the rest of the work. Chelena looked tiny nestled in his arms, but she wasn’t crying anymore and that’s all anyone asked from the situation.

“Sorry I was late, Ma had me roped up in advertisin’ the thing she’s been tryin’ to get me to do, and people were really eager for it for some reason. I haven’t played that violin professionally in a while now, but people just want to have me teachin’ their kids anyway, because I’m not askin’ for nearly as much as actual teachers are.” He sounded sheepish as he explained himself, as this had been the very first “job” his mother had suggested at him back when he’d lost his original one, and it had taken him until then to finally accept it. “I’m not lookin’ forward to when this all starts, but havin’ actual money of my own again is nothin’ but a step in the right direction for me and Sev.”

“Aw, so how long until you two are moving back into a place of your own?” Cynthia’s question was answered with a shrug, which she accepted as a valid response. “Fair enough, just thought that might have been something on your minds, especially with you having two kids that need their own space.”

“Listen, any day that I’m stuck in a house with Maribelle is a bad one, but at least her and Chrom are around to help with the girls if we really need it. Which…we don’t, typically, but it’s a good thing to have to fall back on.” Severa jostled one of her legs, bouncing Lunabel up a bit and making the girl slam her crayon down again. “Don’t you just love when you get to spend time with your Mamaw-belle, huh Luna?”

“Yes, Mama,” the girl replied, thankful she wasn’t getting yelled at once more. “Mama _and_ Che-eena, yup!”

“Oh my gods, that’s what she calls her sister?” Gasping at how adorable she found the little nickname, Cynthia leaned against the table to look into the little girl’s face, but Lunabel had already moved back to coloring again. “Oh, I wanted to hear if she’d have a nickname for Soleil, even though they don’t really know each other yet.”

“Give it time, I’m sure once all these kids are grown up a bit more Luna’ll have nicknames for everyone.” Severa sighed, thinking about the day that she wasn’t going to be having to wrangle a three-year-old and she wouldn’t have a newborn to tend to all the time. “I can’t wait until that happens, these five kids are going to be the best of friends.”

“There’s basically four babies here and you’re already talking about everyone being best friends? Well it’s a good thing that growing up around family is a guaranteed way to make everyone grow up loving each other!” Coming into the picture during Severa’s statement, with his arms filled with several bags of wrapped boxes, Owain stopped walking when he got to Noire’s side and started setting down all the gifts next to her, hearing the cheers erupt from the two kids right there who were excited to see their dad. “Yes, yes, hello there you two, I’ve got all sorts of goodies here for you but you’ve got to be patient, we’ve still got all the cool stuff outside.”

“You weren’t kidding when you said you had ‘quite’ a few presents,” Severa remarked, looking at the amount of things Owain had already brought in with the reminder that more was coming, and Noire nodded at her words. “This is making me feel kind of like a bad parent, thinking about everything we got Luna for her first birthday. Of course, we didn’t actually have a party for her until her second, and _that_ was a fun time for all of us, wasn’t it?”

No one answered her, but it gave her the moment to look at everyone and remember back to that simpler time in their lives, the day where her daughter had officially started walking without a foot brace, the day where two friends had announced their engagement, the day where everything had mostly gone right. It gave her high hopes for this occasion, because if it was possible for something to go right in her life, it definitely needed to be possible for people who weren’t as big of magnets of bad luck and karma as she was.

Judging by the collection of people that filed in over the course of the next hour, it seemed that her hopes were going to be answered. As Owain, and eventually his parents, brought in all the presents for the twins and started setting them around the area they had for the party, other guests began to arrive. First came Lucina and Laurent, each of them holding a bag that everyone knew contained a personalized baby book for each of the twins, but no one was allowed to call attention to it. “We’re just bringing gifts, no big deal,” Lucina told everyone as she took her seat. “The twins will love them when they’re older, but for now? I’d advise not letting them anywhere near these.”

With a laugh, Noire replied, “Noted, I think I can guess what they are and I don’t think my babies need papercuts in their mouths quite yet.”

“No one said anything about paper.” Lucina’s reply came quickly and was spoken flatly, as if she was trying to tell a joke that no one was going to find funny because they all knew that the bags were both holding baby books. “I just mentioned gifts. Don’t jump to conclusions like that, maybe we’ll surprise you all.” Based on how neither of them had filled the bags with anything but the gift, and everyone who peered into them could see the tightly-bound pages of the handcrafted books, it was clear that she wasn’t attempting to be serious with the denial, but why in the world was Lucina trying to crack jokes?

The answer was who came in next, who she must have seen in the parking lot when they’d arrived. “Why, it’s lovely to see so many gathered here already to celebrate two very special children!” Maribelle gushed, bending down to pinch the cheek of the twin closest to her (which it was impossible to tell which one it was, as they were dressed identically and no one knew the ways to tell them apart besides one being male and one being female). “You’re such a cutie, and a year old today! What a blessing from the gods that you’ve made it this far into life already!”

“Maribelle, that implies that you think one or both of them were going to die,” Chrom told her, standing behind her as she stood back up to full height. “Which, given who their father is, I suppose I could see why you would think so. But Owain’s proven himself to be a decent man and a better father, which is…” His voice trailed off as he looked towards his own son, who was still sitting with his infant daughter cradled in his arms. “Ahem, I take my own point back. We raised Brady just as well as Owain was raised, didn’t we?”

“I don’t mean to sound offensive, but I believe we raised him better than his cousin could have ever been raised, and I don’t mean that as an insult to dear Lissa, as she was merely trying her best in everything.” Giving a wave to the other twin that she hadn’t interacted with, Maribelle moved on as quickly as she’d arrived, taking her seat next to Brady and directly across from Lucina with a smile in her daughter’s direction. “What a surprise, I would never have expected you to show up to a function like this. School events always seem to have you busier than myself or your father ever are!”

“Managed to get the day off today, Mother, but even if I hadn’t I still would have come by to drop off the bo—gifts! The gifts!” Lucina covered her mouth as she caught herself in her misspoken comment, which everyone who’d been present for the conversation earlier thought was hilarious but Maribelle was not quite sure what was happening. It was always nice to see her in a place of being speechless, even if no one was going to call attention to it.

“At any rate, it’s good to see you here today, Lucina,” Chrom said, to break the awkward silence that had resulted from Maribelle’s confusion, before he looked at Laurent and gave him a quick nod. “You as well, Laurent. Even though you never really see one of you without the other right there beside you.”

“Thank you, sir,” Laurent replied, giving a slight nod to go along with the one Chrom had given him. “Your extended family is undoubtedly my own at this point, and being present for the multitude of events you seem to have while alongside Lucina gives me a sense of inclusion I would be hard-pressed to find in my own family.”

Now it was Chrom’s turn to be confused, trying to make sense of what had just been said to him, but he shrugged it off and let the conversation die down at their end of the table so that the rest of the group could continue talking. “So, anyway, where are you going to keep all this stuff after this? Your apartment is nowhere near big enough to have this much junk around,” Severa asked, looking at Noire as she kept in mind just how big the stack of gifts had piled up to become. “Seriously, keeping so much stuff in a small place like that never works out very well.”

“We’re going to move a bunch of things over to Owain’s parents’ place, because they offered to store it there for us, but we’ll make sure that we keep the new things exactly where we need them.” Noire tilted her head back to look and see what gifts were back behind her now, and when she didn’t see what she was looking for she leaned forward once more, her face scrunched up in thought.

“If you find that you have anything you don’t want to keep anymore, I’ll take it off your hands easy-peasy,” Cynthia said, smiling at her friend. “Now that the festival’s over and Inigo and his mother know how much they managed to bring in from it, we’ll have more than enough money to get a bigger place of our own, and that means more room for things for Soleil to play with when she’s older!”

“You’re going to spoil that little girl to death, aren’t you?” Watching how Cynthia was still rocking the carseat that her daughter was sitting in, Severa honestly didn’t expect to be given any kind of answer, but when she saw her friend shrug she couldn’t help but laugh. “Just be careful with her, okay? She’s a real person you’ve got to take care of, you can’t spend your time spoiling her without actually caring for her.”

“I know that, trust me. I’ll make sure that she’s the most well-taken care of baby I can possibly make her, and if that means she grows up actually spoiled, I won’t mind it.” She gasped as she let the rocking stop, her focus turning towards getting the baby out of the carseat to show her off to everyone there. Soleil was a bit bigger than Chelena was, even though she was a handful of hours (and one calendar day) younger than her, but her size wasn’t what was noticeable upon first looking at her. She, even at a couple weeks old, had a fair amount of bright pink hair that looked just like her paternal grandmother’s, that had a tiny bow clipped into it, and her face as she looked around at all the big, scary people at the table was one of fear, her wide eyes showing how terrified she was to be held up in front of so many others.

When she started wailing, she managed to set Chelena off as well, and for a moment there were two crying newborns being held at the table, until both of them were hushed by the parent holding them. Their dual crying had attracted the attention of several people in the restaurant, however, but the people who were now approaching the table weren’t strangers at all. “What a surprise, coming out to see you all here for some sort of special occasion,” Cordelia’s voice rang out as she and Gaius approached the table, her eyes like daggers straight at Severa. “We had heard there were large parties here today, which made dining out for one last meal with Subaki and his family much harder than necessary, but to think that you all were actually here…”

“I’ll, uh, be right back, I think,” Severa said, getting Lunabel off her lap so that she could stand and face her parents somewhere that wasn’t at the table. As they walked towards the front of the restaurant, passing by others going to the party, she started talking to her parents without fear of someone overhearing her. “Which one of them told you I was going to be here today, huh?”

“Maribelle made it very clear that she and Brady were going to be here, while she was passing out the fliers for his new violin tutoring sessions. I might have jumped to the conclusion that it meant you and the girls would be here as well.” Cordelia shrugged. “What I said about coming to dine with Subaki one last time was the truth, though, and we would be honored if you would come show off Chelena to him before he leaves.”

“I’d rather not do that,” she replied, shuddering at the thought of the kinds of judgmental comments her second cousin would make about the child. “He doesn’t deserve getting to see her, not when he’ll just complain about her…you know.”

Gaius held one of his hands out for Severa to use as demonstration for her point, the upper half of one of his fingers missing like it always had been. “I’ve known that kid for how long and he’s never called out me missing one, he wouldn’t do the same to her. Or maybe he would, he does rather enjoy picking on small children for what they have or don’t have.”

“And he likes picking on _my_ children because they’re mine, I’m sure. He did it to Luna about her name, he’ll definitely do it to Chelena because of her hand.” Stopping in her tracks when they reached the front of the restaurant, Severa refused to follow her parents further even when they tried directing her towards their table just to say goodbye to Subaki, no children involved. “No, he can go home without me saying anything to him, that’s how little I care about him right now.”

“Severa, this isn’t behavior befitting a grown woman,” Cordelia reprimanded her, shaking her head sternly. “You will be coming with us, and that is final.”

“Whoa there, what’s going on here?” Thanking her lucky stars that someone had interrupted this showdown between her and her parents, Severa looked towards Inigo as he came into the restaurant, followed by a few of his dancer friends. She mouthed him a silent thank you as he came up beside her and pushed her a few steps back towards where she’d come from. “I am fairly certain that Severa has somewhere else she needs to be right now, and while I can’t say I know what you want with her, I can say that being right here is bad for her health.”

“I played the role of armed guard for a few of your performances, and this is how you’re going to repay me? By stepping in and dragging my daughter away from me? Do you not know how to respect the people who make the world run around you?” Nearly making the encounter into an altercation, Cordelia was given an answer when Inigo and his friends swarmed around Severa and headed her back towards the large party in the corner, never actually replying to what Cordelia had asked.

This, predictably, was a surprise to Severa, given what she had done involving Inigo over the summer. “Of all the people to come in here and tell my mother off, why’s it you?” she asked, looking at him as he proudly led his dance buddies towards the table. “Not like I’m complaining, she was going to make me say goodbye to someone I hate, but seriously, how did it end up being you coming it right then?”

“It just so happens that now’s when our farewell party let out and I was able to make my way over to this birthday party.” Inigo laughed, motioning to the two men with him. “And these two, they insisted they come with for a few moments, for some reason. Said something about _needing_ to talk to Owain one last time before they left.”

Severa wasn’t able to understand why that was something Inigo was allowing, but when they got to the table and she’d taken her seat once more, she had Brady leaning in to whisper in her ear, “Uh, Sev? Last time I saw those guys not on a stage, they were groping Owain and trying to steal his phone and flirt with him. What’s Inigo thinking, bringing them here to his kids’ birthday party? Does he want them seeing their dad be touched up on?”

“I’m sorry, what?” Severa had to make Brady repeat exactly what he’d just said before she glared across the table at where Inigo had taken a seat next to Cynthia. “Is he serious about this? Inigo, are you aware of what your friends there did?”

“Aware and I have told them not to do it again, don’t worry. What they’re here to do, I don’t know, but it most certainly won’t be anything like the time Owain actually met them.” Inigo was right in what he said, because when Owain came back to the table (for the last time, the final gifts in his arms), the two men grabbed him in a hug and thanked him for not having pressed charges against them for their previous encounter, then offered him a spot in either of their homes in their native country if he wanted to visit, before bidding him, Inigo, and everyone else a long farewell.

“I don’t think I ever want to get touched by a furry and an exotic dancer at the same time again, ever,” Owain admitted once they were gone and he was sitting with Noire and the twins. “They might be nice guys, but I don’t think I can handle them both at the same time.”

Everyone got a laugh out of his honesty, and with that having been said the party officially got started, servers coming over to get orders and properly get the meal underway. People were talking amongst each other, there were requests to hold babies up for the people at the other end to see, and most importantly, every few minutes the twins were given a chance to open a present and see what was inside it.

It was a fun time, and nothing about it should have been changed, not when everyone was enjoying themselves and the atmosphere that had been created for them. But just like that, it all changed when someone walked into the restaurant, making a beeline for the table off to the side. Her footsteps were heavy and when she came closer she called out the names of two people that would recognize her from the distance she was at—and when Cynthia and Severa heard their names and looked at who was calling them, they both turned to each other with worry in their eyes.

A hushed silence fell over the entire table as everyone else came to the realization of who it was that had dropped in on them. “Uh, hi there,” Kjelle said with an awkward wave to everyone, trying not to make eye contact with someone who wasn’t Cynthia or Severa. “Listen, I’m not here to start anything, I just came to say one last goodbye to some old friends before I headed out, but I’d like to do it privately.”

“Don’t do anything, just ignore her,” Brady told Severa, grabbing her arm to keep her from considering to do anything. That became useless when Cynthia stood up, taking Soleil in her arms, and went to stand beside Kjelle. Severa wasn’t going to let her friend go off on her own, not after everything that had happened, and Brady knew that was the case, so he let go of her and allowed for her to take Chelena with her as she went. The last thing he said before she was up, however, was a reminder to come back with child in tow, because he didn’t want to lose either of them.

With that in mind, she decided that she was going to make this quick, even if it meant coming back to the party before Cynthia did. “I wasn’t expecting either of you to actually come with me, I’ll have you know.” Kjelle gave a soft snort as she led them outside the restaurant, the babies both whimpering when the bright light hit their eyes. “And to bring your kids with me, you’re just teasing me now, aren’t you?”

“No, we’re here to say goodbye, exactly like you asked,” Cynthia reminded her, at the same moment that Severa had looked to Kjelle’s hair and saw that it had been recently re-bleached and had a bright bubblegum pink streak in its front.

“You knew you were leaving all along, didn’t you?” she asked, eyes narrowing at the splash of color. “This whole time, through everything, you knew this was how it was going to end, and you did everything to try and make this goodbye go differently.”

Sighing, Kjelle ran a hand through her hair, brushing it out of her face. “I knew that, if Gerome and that chick stayed hooked up through the end of the festival, he’d either have her move in with us, or we’d follow her back to her home. Well, festival’s over, they’re still a thing—and don’t worry, I’m just as down with her as he is—and now we’re heading out.” She waved towards her car, that was overstuffed with everything that she and Gerome owned, a motorized scooter tied to the back with a lot of rope, and Gerome nowhere to be seen. “Don’t worry, he’s sitting with her helping her finish packing everything she’d brought out here to Ylisse, I’m not leaving him with nothing.”

“Because that’s what we’re so worried about, definitely.” Severa wasn’t actually sure if there was anything she was worried about. This was the woman that had come back into her life after five years and wrecked everything she had, all for nothing. While she was hurt that this was the end of the road for them, she knew this was the best thing that could happen in their stories. “You be safe out there, wherever it is you’re going. Don’t go around ruining any more marriages if you can help it.”

“And don’t forget to keep in touch, you’ll miss out on our babies getting older if you never contact us again!” Cynthia, on the other hand, hadn’t been as targeted by Kjelle as Severa had been, and she wasn’t nearly as fixated on the issues that this woman had created. This was still a friend of hers, despite everything, and she was going to make sure that they stayed that way if they could.

“Don’t worry, I’ll come back to check in on you and your babies. But, for the road, while they’re still so little, mind if we get one group picture going?” Kjelle grabbed her phone and waved it at the two. “I’ll take it of all of us, so I have something recent to remember you both by. Sound good?”

There was hesitation in Severa’s voice as she agreed to it, but Cynthia was entirely on board, and so they took one quick picture before Kjelle decided it was time to go. “I should head out, can’t keep Gerome or Charlotte waiting too much longer. The trip’s already going to be a long one, and starting this late’s only going to make it worse. Until next time, ladies?”

The three adult women shared one long look before they mutually agreed that there would be a next time, and as Kjelle was getting into her car to leave, Cynthia and Severa were heading back inside. “Well, she sure made this summer one we’ll never forget, didn’t she?” Cynthia asked, carefully nudging Severa in the arm with her own arm. “Can’t say I liked everything she did, but she’s an old friend, I’ll always like having her around.”

“Yeah, she’s what made things interesting.” Looking down at Chelena as the girl started drifting off in her arms, Severa sighed. The summer would have been interesting enough without Kjelle’s reappearance, without the festival, without the cries of cheating and the ruining of lives. Just having two best friends being pregnant together would have made the summer plenty of fun for them both, but the whole cycle of lies had started up and gotten ugly, making things much more interesting than they would have been otherwise.

Ultimately, though, it was Kjelle’s fault that so many things had happened how they had, and so maybe Cynthia had a point after all. At any rate, Severa knew that this farewell meant that her metaphorical glass house was exactly as it had been before the summer started, and that was exactly how she’d want it to stay, forever and always.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and just like that it's over! thanks for reading, everyone!


End file.
